I said, “I’m sorry, but we’re tired and we want to eat sitting down. We can’t eat soup out of brown paper.”
After a while he saw there wasn’t any use trying to peddle things around the field, so he went away and in a little while we saw him and his brother pulling down the boards from underneath the wagon. Oh, boy, but weren’t we glad! He wasn’t going to miss that chance. I guess he knew what we wanted all right. All the scouts began shouting, “We’ve won, we’ve won!” And the fellows in my troop went around telling all the others how they had done us a good turn. They all began calling me General Blakeley because I had managed it.
But one thing, girls are smarter than fellows, I have to admit that. Just you wait and see. Because something terrible is going to happen.
Pretty soon Tony’s old lunch wagon came lumbering over toward us. There were about seven or eight men pushing it and Tony was holding onto the shaft to steer it. When we saw that, we all began shouting and yelling and a scout from East Bridgeboro jumped up on a grocery box and tied his scarf on the end of his scout staff and began calling:
“Hurrah, for General Blakeley! Hurrah for the young Napoleon of Bridgeboro! Three cheers for the hero of the battle of Downing’s lot! All hail the conqueror of Tony Spaghetti! Three cheers for the greatest strategist of the age! The car shall pass!”
Believe me, we didn’t do a thing but lay waste to that conquered territory! I bought three frankfurters to start. Vic Norris bought two slices of lemon pie, just to begin. Dorry Benton bought a whole cake. The counter inside that wagon was lined with victorious scouts, and others were waiting outside for their turns. Our young hero was opening his program with a ham sandwich and a piece of custard pie, and a cup of coffee. That was just the prologue.
Pretty soon over came the girls and one of them wanted to know what we were all shouting about. I know that girl; she’s Professor Skybrow’s daughter and she wears big spectacles. She’s too smart to live, that girl is. She was in my class last term and she took all the merits in sight. She’d have taken the whole school if it hadn’t been fastened down.
Pee-wee went up to her and tried to speak. He was trying to hold his cup of coffee and sandwich and his pie in two hands, and there was custard all over his face. He looked as if he’d been through a war.
“We’ve—we’ve won the war,” he was trying to say. “Roy Blakeley planned the whole thing—he——”
“I’m the modern Napoleon,” I said. “I’ve got General Pershing tearing his hair.”