“I don’t see it,” Dub said.
“You mean what we don’t get,” I said. “Where do you suppose that breeze went anyway? I’d just like to know where it went.”
“Maybe it went crazy like you,” Pee-wee shouted.
“I never thought of that,” I told him.
Jiminies, we were all sprawling on the grass talking a lot of nonsense and kidding Pee-wee and taking each other’s hats off and pulling up grass and throwing it in each other’s faces—a lot we cared about hiking.
“Now you see how it is,” the Kid said to Dub and Sandy. “Do you blame the Scouts over at camp that they won’t go on hikes with him—gee whiz, they all had a taste of it. We always get stalled like this and just sit around fooling and don’t do anything and he calls it a hike. Even he’ll write all about it and a publisher will print it to show how crazy he is and he’ll expect fellers to buy those books where he tells a lot of crazy nonsense. This is the first summer you fellers ever saw him, but he’s like this all the time, you ask Westy Martin in his own patrol. He’s the only one of them that’s got any sense.”
I said, “Scout Harris, you will cease talking about my old college chump, Westy Martin. I won’t hear another word against him. He can’t help it if he has some sense—he’s more to be pitied than blamed. I won’t hear a word against him—not even a punctuation mark. Anyway, what’s the use of having sense? That’s one law I have no use for, the law of gravity.”
Dub said, “Let’s tell riddles.”
“Sure,” I said, “that’s a good idea. Now the hike is really started. Why doesn’t Santa Claus wear a scout suit? Give me any answer, I don’t care what, and I’ll give you the question to it.”
“Why doesn’t Santa Claus wear a scout suit?” the kid shouted.