“It’s medicine made from snails; Licorice Stick knows how to make it. You have to stir it with a willow stick and then you get well quick.”
“How can you get well quick when snails are slow?” Pee-wee asked. “That shows that Licorice Stick is crazy. It would be better to make it with lightning-bugs.”
“Lightning-bugs mean there are ghosts around,” said Pepsy; “the lightning-bugs are their eyes. But anyway, just the same, nobody can fix Whitie Bungel, because the doctor from Baxter said so, and he knows because he’s got an automobile.”
“Automobiles don’t prove you know a lot,” said Pee-wee.
“Just the same Whitie is going to die,” said Pepsy, “and then you’ll see, because when my mother didn’t have any money she died, so there.”
Pee-wee did not answer; he appeared to be thinking. And so the minutes passed as they sat there on the rock by the roadside, waiting for the mailman’s auto to take them to Baxter City.
“Do you say I can’t fix it?” he finally demanded. “Maybe you think scouts can’t fix things. They know first aid, scouts do. I can fix that little feller; maybe you think I can’t. You come with me, I’ll show you. Scouts—scouts can do things—they’re better than snails and lightning-bugs. I’ll show you what they can do; you come with me.”
“Ain’t you going to wait for the mailman?”
“No, I’m not. You come with me.”
This apparent desertion of another cherished enterprise all in the one day, took poor Pepsy quite by storm. She did not understand the workings of Pee-wee’s active and fickle mind. But she followed his sturdy little form dutifully as he trudged up the road and into a certain lane.