So then I cleaned my fountain pen out and started again, and this is my third start, and my pen’s working fine. Only I’ve got to go downstairs to supper now so I have to end this chapter.
My sister says the place to end chapters is just when something very exciting is happening. But my mother says the place to end them is just when the dinner gong sounds. Anyway to-night we’re going to have chocolate pudding and that’s exciting so you’ll be in suspense while I’m eating chocolate pudding and after that I bet you don’t know who you’re going to meet.
CHAPTER II
ON THE SHELF
Mm, mmm, that was good! I remind myself of Pee-wee Harris, eating three helpings. Now I’m going to start.
When I went up to Temple Camp this summer about the first scout I saw was Hervey Willetts. I guess you know that fellow all right. He comes from Massachusetts—as often as he can. That’s the place he goes away from.
I’ll tell you just where he was sitting. You know how the cooking shack is—it’s right at the edge of the lake. Chocolate Drop, he’s cook. He’s a kind of a whitish black. He’s the color of the middle of the night. There’s a big window facing the lake and it’s got a kind of a big board shutter with hinges on top. The first thing in the morning, Chocolate Drop opens that and props it open with a stick so it sticks out like a kind of a shelf.
Hervey Willetts was sitting on that board shelf. If Chocolate Drop had taken the prop away Hervey Willetts would have gone into the lake. But that was just what he wanted. He was just sitting there waiting for Chocolate Drop to let down that shutter. Then he could say that he didn’t go into the lake after five o’clock because that’s against the rule. He could say he was sitting on shore and Chocolate Drop dumped him into the lake. That way he could get a swim in the evening. He didn’t say so, but I know that fellow. He would get a swim accidentally on purpose.
He was sitting there with nothing on but an old pair of khaki trousers and a khaki shirt and that crazy hat he always wears with the brim all gone and the crown all full of holes and campaign buttons and things. Gee whiz, you can always tell him by that hat. I could see him sitting there as we rowed across the lake from the trail side—that’s the way we always go.
I shouted, “Look who’s here.”
He called back, “I’m looking; it’s just as unpleasant for me as it is for you.”