“Are you going to be a thief when you grow up?”
“No, I guess not,” said Pee-wee.
“You can have three guesses.”
“All right, I guess not three times. Now, tell me if you told your father about seeing that man getting dead.”
“Yes, and he said I’m always seeing things; everybody says that. Maybe I’ll get dead when it rains.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Pee-wee said; “Licorice Stick’s been telling you that. Didn’t you say you were going to be a giant first?”
“You’re not a giant.”
Alas, Pee-wee knew this only too well. He knew too that it would be quite impossible to get anything in the way of a connected narrative out of this stern little autocrat. Whether he had actually been “seeing things” or had only seen something in his queer little inner life, who should say? Evidently no one took him very seriously. And this fact did not seem to trouble him at all.
Removing the compass cord from about his neck, Pee-wee advanced to proffer his second gift to the Bungel family. Little did that stiff, serious little figure know that the much-needed money which Mrs. Bungel had been wise enough to take from her husband, had come from the same source. Pee-wee searched in vain for any sign of hands in those enveloping blankets. There were no hands, there seemed to be no body even; just two eyes looking straight ahead as if their owner were not going to assist at all in the transfer of the little gift. So Pee-wee laid the compass on the porch rail.
“There you are,” he said; “that needle always points to the north.”