“A sto—you sell eats, hey?”
“Oh, you mean a store,” Pee-wee said.
“I help you,” said the lanky stranger; “me’n Pepsy, we good friends. She hab to go back to dat workhouse, de bridge it say so. Dat bridge am a sperrit.”
“You’re crazy,” Pee-wee said. “What’s the use of being scared at an old rattly bridge. If you want to help us I’ll tell you how you can do it. I made a lot of signs and you can tack them all up on the trees along the road for us if you want to. I’ll show you just how to do it.”
No one was at the shack when they reached it for Pepsy was about her household duties, so she had no knowledge of this new recruit in their enterprise. Pee-wee’s conscience was clear in this matter, however, for he had enlisted Licorice Stick as an employee, at the staggering salary of twenty-five cents a week; there was no thought of his being a partner. The willing assistance of his new friend would leave his own time free for more important duties, and the advertising work once done, Licorice Stick was to devote his time to catching fish for the “sto” and other incidental duties.
Pee-wee now arranged his advertising masterpieces in order for posting. The imposing type on the cards impressed Licorice Stick deeply. He could not read two words but he seemed to sense the sensational announcements, and the arrow which Pee-wee had made on each card to indicate the direction of the shack was regarded by him as a sort of mystic symbol.
“This is the way you have to do,” Pee-wee said; “now pay attention, because it pays to advertise. There are two cards for each sign, see?”
“Dey’s nice black print,” Licorice Stick said with reverent appreciation. “En dey’s de magic sign, too.”
“That tells them where the place is,” Pee-wee said. “Now, you keep the cards just the way I give them to you and always tack them up with the arrow pointing this way, see? Here’s a hammer and here’s some tacks. When you come to a nice big tree or a wooden fence or an old barn, you’re supposed to tack them up, and be sure to do it the way I tell you. Now, suppose you’re going to tack up the first card—the one on the top of the pile. You tack it up and right close under it you tack up the next one, and it will say:
FRANKFURTERS