Pretty soon we could hear him marching back and forth on the roof of the car, and shouting at the top of his lungs. Even before I got the stove hot there was a big crowd standing all around outside, laughing.
He kept shouting, "Here they are! They're all smoking hot! The celebrated Boy Scout tenderflops! Flopped by the only original Boy Scout flopper! They're one cent each! Eat one and you'll never eat another—I mean you'll never eat anything else! O-o-o-o-oh! They're all red hot! The kind we eat around the camp-fire! Only one cent! None genuine unless stamped BE PREPARED! The famous scout tenderflops! They melt in your mouth! They MELT in your MOUTH!"
"Good night!" I said to the fellows; "listen to him."
By that time I was frying them six at a clip, while Connie and Wig and Westy were passing them around on pieces of board and scooping in the money. All of a sudden I heard Pee-wee's voice; it seemed to be in the stove. I opened the lid and heard him calling down the stovepipe, "Send me some up here so I can be eating them; it'll make the people hungry."
"That's a good idea," Wig said; "let's all be eating them, and let's look kind of happy every time we take a bite. It pays to advertise."
We passed a saucepan full of them up to Pee-wee and charged them up to advertising. Westy said, "That's what you call overhead expense."
Believe me, that kid was some overhead expense, all right.
"You have to demonstrate," he shouted down.
"You're a pretty good demonstrator," a man called up to him.
I was laughing so hard I could hardly fry the cakes fast enough. There was a big crowd outside, just scrambling for them, and we had Westy's aluminum coffee-pot about half full of pennies. Up on the car, Pee-wee was strutting up and down, waving the saucepan with one arm and holding a cake in his other hand and shouting, "O—oh, to taste one! Just to TASTE one! Watch me eat one! Mm-mmm! They're one cent each! None genuine unless stamped BE PREPARED! Send up some more, you fellows!"