“They never treat,” the girl said.
“Sometimes they even make girls treat,” Pee-wee said. “Do you call that being a shiveller?”
The girl said, “I should say not. I know a boy and when he took me to have refreshments, he dropped a penny in a slot and got a piece of chocolate and broke it in half. He called that refreshments.”
“A scout can make a light in the dark even if he hasn’t got any matches,” Pee-wee said. “Do you know what phosphates are?”
“You mean orange phosphates and lemon phosphates?” the girl asked him.
“N-o-o-o,” Pee-wee said, very lofty like. “It’s something you can make light with in the pitch dark. If you’re going to be a scout you have to have a lot of resources. Nature, you have to be able to kind of boss it.”
The girl looked as if she didn’t see how any one could do that. She said, “If you’re bossy I don’t like you.”
“I don’t mean I’d boss you,” Pee-wee said. “I’d only boss nature. The woods—you know—and the stars and things like that.”
“Mr. Silly, you couldn’t boss the stars,” the girl said.
“That shows how much you know about the stars being guides,” he said. “Maybe on another planet there are scouts. Maybe there are Boy Scouts of Mars. And maybe to-night they’re taking a hike on Mars and maybe they’re following this earth, maybe it’s guiding them. See? Right while we’re sitting here eating waffles maybe some scouts are following this earth.