All the while the waiter kept his eye on them, and the girl was kind of sulky. She wasn’t mad, but just a little sulky. She wanted to go away, I could see that. She just pouted and said, “It’s poky sitting here after we’re all finished.”
Pee-wee said, “You’ll feel more like dancing if you have a good rest.”
“They’re playing a fox-trot,” the girl said.
“I know all about foxes,” Pee-wee said. “Do you want me to tell you about them?”
Oh, boy, I nearly died laughing. Brent had to put his hand over my mouth and Warde had to put his hand over Hervey’s mouth. There sat the kid with a terrible, heroic scowl on his face, and his feet kind of locked in the legs of the chair, and only nine cents in his pocket, and the girl looking at him and waiting, and the Italian keeping his eye on him, and the dancing going on over at the pavilion, and Mr. Sorronto lost in the shuffle. I don’t know where he was, he just forgot to come back, I guess. Poor kid, but just the same I couldn’t help laughing. It wouldn’t have bothered a sharpy much. He’d have made her pay the quarter, he should worry. I know sharpies, all right.
All of a sudden, Hervey Willetts broke loose. He went sailing into the room with that funny hop, skip and jump he has, and went winding in and out among the tables, and just as he was passing Pee-wee he grabbed him by the hand and began shaking it and saying, “H’lo, Scout Harris, I haven’t seen you in quite a while.” All the while he kept on going and went winding in and out among the tables and out through the door again. But I noticed Pee-wee had something in his hand under the table and I knew it was money.
“All right, if you don’t want to wait, I’ll pay him now,” Pee-wee said. “Gee whiz, it doesn’t make any difference to me.” Then I could see from the change he got that Hervey must have passed him a five dollar bill. That was the day he got his allowance from home; he got it every two weeks. I know he must have got it that very day or he wouldn’t have had it all still in his pocket. That was Hervey all over, reckless and careless.
Gee, I thought about that a lot later, especially after what happened pretty soon. Because while the four of us were standing outside laughing, he was the one to break loose and go to Pee-wee’s rescue. And he did it in a way so the girl would never know. I heard her say to Pee-wee, “That boy’s just a silly.”
But, jiminies, I can see him now the way he went in and out among those tables. He can’t do things like other people, he just can’t. Afterwards he told us that was called the Tangled Trail. Gee whiz, little we thought that pretty soon he’d be on a real tangled trail. Little we thought when we were all the time saying, “the plot grows thicker,” how pretty soon it would really grow thicker—for Hervey anyway....