“I like you better than all of them,” Pepsy said. “Sometimes I’m kept after school too, you can ask Miss Bellison.”
“One thing sure, I like you well enough to be partners with you,” Pee-wee said. “Do you want me to tell you something? I thought of a way to make a lot of money, and if I do I’m going to buy three new tents for our troop. Do you want to go partners with me? We’ll say the tents are from both of us and we’ll have a lot of fun.”
“I had a dollar once and I sent it to the heathens,” Pepsy said, “and I’d rather help you than the heathens, because I like you better.”
“Heathens are all right,” Pee-wee said, “and I’m not saying anything against heathens, especially wild ones, but we’re just as wild. You ought to go to Temple Camp and see how wild we are.”
He did not look very wild as he sat upon the narrow seat with his knees drawn up and his scout hat on the back of his head showing his curly hair. The girl gazed at his natty khaki attire, the row of merit badges on his sleeve, the trophies of his heroic triumphs. She was not the first to feel the lure of a uniform. But it was the first uniform she had ever seen at close range, for in the wartime she had been in that frowning brick structure which still haunted her.
“I’ll help you because you can do everything and you know a lot,” she said.
In the fullness of her generosity and loyalty to Pee-wee’s prowess she never reminded him or even thought of the things she could do which he could not. She would not do her little optional chore of milking a cow for fear he might perceive her superiority in this little item of proficiency. Poor girl, she was a better scout than she knew.
“If you think it up I’ll do all the work, and then we’ll be even,” she said.
So Pee-wee told her of the colossal scheme which his lively imagination had conceived.
“It all started with a hot frankfurter,” he said. “If I hadn’t bought a hot frankfurter I wouldn’t have thought of it. So that shows you how important a frankfurter is—kind of. Maybe a person might get to be a millionaire just starting with a frankfurter, you never can tell....”