“That’s one thing about us,” Pee-wee piped up; “we’re not as smart as we look. Maybe it seems as if we could do most anything, but we can’t. That’s one thing about a scout, he has to admit it if he doesn’t know everything. He has to—he has to—eh—he has to safeguard the lives of others. See? Suppose we ran into a ditch and upset the car and everybody got killed. They wouldn’t thank us, would they?”
One of the ladies said, “Oh, isn’t he just too funny for anything!”
The man said, kind of slow and drawly like, he said, “Wall, yer could drive slow en’ thar ain’t no ditches.”
“Even one ditch would be enough,” the kid said. “Isn’t there just one?”
Jiminetty, I could hardly keep a straight face. There were all those people crowding around the van and saying how nice it would be if we would take a group to the reunion and how we had plenty of room. I thought of Brent sitting on the grocery box inside, and I bet he was laughing.
I said under my breath to Pee-wee, “All right, you got us into this with your good turns; now you can get us out.”
Then a man said, “A couple of boys who are going to have an eye out to recapture a convict, like this here little feller says, they ought to be smart enough and kind enough, I reckon, to give some of these here disappointed souls a lift. Jest you boys open these here doors and let the youngsters pile in, so they can go see Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
“That—that show isn’t going to be much good,” Pee-wee said; “and I can tell you one thing, it’s pretty stuffy in that van. That’s one thing scouts believe in—fresh air.”
By that time he was fidgeting around on the seat and some of the people were laughing and some of them looked surprised.
“That’s just it,” Pee-wee said; “if you were boy scouts and you were going to try to capture a criminal, you wouldn’t want a lot of children along, would you? And ladies? Ladies are a-scared of criminals; gee, I don’t blame them.”