Pee-wee Harris

“ Pee-wee assures her he will fix everything for her—and proceeds to do so—with his usual success.
Pee-wee Harris Adrift
A little spot of land up the river breaks away and floats down stream, with a laden apple tree growing upon it. Pee-wee takes possession of this island and the resulting adventures are decidedly entertaining.
Pee-wee Harris F. O. B. Bridgeboro
Pee-wee and his Patrol Leader set off on a trip to Temple Camp in an old flivver. But Temple Camp is not reached so readily when mishaps and adventures follow in rapid succession. ”

“ Pee-wee said, “and then start and I’ll count for you. You’re not supposed to touch the floor. Most always girls go over backwards, but don’t you care, because the window sill is there. I won’t make fun of you.”
“Oh, you won’t?” said Miss Hope ironically.
“Sure I won’t because girls can do lots of things that fellers can’t do; gee whiz, I have to admit that.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“If I tilt you over backward I bet you can’t get up by yourself with your hands clasped,” Pee-wee said. “We all tried that at scout meeting and I was the only one that did it. Are you good at doing things?” ”

“ Pee-wee could see the imposing procession as far down as the bend.
“Some detour,” a good-natured voice said.
“Detour? Detour?” Pee-wee whispered in sudden and terrible excitement. Then, as the full purport of the staggering truth burst upon him he issued forth from the roadside rest and contemplated the approaching pageant with joy bubbling up like soda water in his heart.
“Never mind,” said another voice, “we can get some eats in this jungle, thank goodness. What I won’t do to a couple of hot frankfurters!”
A sudden chill cooled the fresh enthusiasm of Scout Harris. ”

“ Pee-wee was always magnanimous in victory. Abiding enmity was a thing he knew not. So now he laid down his stencil brush (within easy reach) and said, “We’re going to start a refreshment shack and sell fruit and lemonade and waffles and things and maybe auto accessories and souvenirs.”
Pepsy seemed a bit uncomfortable as Pee-wee said this, perhaps just a trifle ashamed. She was afraid that this clever, sophisticated young fellow would ridicule their enterprise, as indeed there was good reason to do. Yet she felt ashamed, too, of her momentary faithlessness to Pee-wee. ”

“ It was Pee-wee’s fate in life to be accepted as a substitute for something better because he was amusing. He did not object to this because, as he said, he had plenty of fun just the same. Being small and full of enterprises entirely disproportionate to his size, he was acceptable everywhere and universally liked. Girls thought he was “excruciating” and “adorable.” Men were greatly taken with him and liked to hear him talk. At Temple Camp, where he and his scout troop spent the summers, he was called the mascot, sometimes the animal cracker. Pee-wee had not an enemy. ”

“ Pee-wee said in scornful reproval; “that could happen to—to—to Julius Caesar.”
“He’s dead, you ask Miss Bellison,” said Pepsy timidly.
“That shows how much you know,” said Pee-wee scornfully as he brushed off his clothing. “Can’t something be a kind of a thing that could happen to somebody who’s dead if he was very smart, only if he wasn’t dead? We got a dollar and ten cents from them, didn’t we?”
“Yes, but—did you—did you—handle them?” Pepsy asked fearfully.
“There are different ways of handling people,” Pee-wee said; “you can’t handle people that are crazy, can you? ”

“ Pee-wee declared. “She’s not a tomboy.”
Pepsy seemed comforted.
“You leave that feller to me,” Pee-wee said. “I can handle Roy Blakeley and all his patrol and they’re a lot of jolliers—they think they’re so smart.”
“I like you better than all of them,” Pepsy said. “Sometimes I’m kept after school too, you can ask Miss Bellison.”
“One thing sure, I like you well enough to be partners with you,” Pee-wee said. “Do you want me to tell you something? I thought of a way to make a lot of money, and if I do I’m going to buy three new tents for our troop. Do you want to go partners with me? ”

“ The plan must be all right, and wondrous in its possibilities. It was an inspiration—born of a frankfurter. It was not for poor Pepsy to take issue with this master mind.
Yet she did venture to say, “Not very many autos come down here, only a few that go through to Berryville. Licorice Stick—”
“That’s a dandy name,” Pee-wee said.
“He goes by a dozen times a day, but he hasn’t got any money, and Mr. Flint goes by but he’s a miser and Doctor Killem goes by in his buggy and he says people eat too much—”
“He’s crazy!” Pee-wee shouted. ”

“ Pee-wee said. “What’s the use of being scared at an old rattly bridge. If you want to help us I’ll tell you how you can do it. I made a lot of signs and you can tack them all up on the trees along the road for us if you want to. I’ll show you just how to do it.”
No one was at the shack when they reached it for Pepsy was about her household duties, so she had no knowledge of this new recruit in their enterprise. Pee-wee’s conscience was clear in this matter, however, for he had enlisted Licorice Stick as an employee, at the staggering salary of twenty-five cents a week ”

“ Pee-wee shouted to Ham Sanders who drove up, "I'm rescuing this automobile from two men that stole it and I got another one to help me and he was trying to steal it and it belongs to a man I know where I live and I was at the movies with him, and that feller said he'd take it back and this feller says I'm a thief and I'm good and hungry."
Ham Sanders gave one look at him and said, "Oh, is that so?"
"It's more than so," Pee-wee shouted, "and I'm going to stick to this automobile, I don't care what. If you say I'm not a scout I can prove it." ”

“ Pee-wee shouted. "Do you know what blackjacks are?"
"Dots and dashes, you can do it with lights too," said Peter; "they tell the truth. If he says signals lie that shows he isn't a scout anyway, and anybody can see he isn't. I stopped them, I did it by myself."
"That's nothing," Pee-wee shouted from the seat, "I nearly got suffocated, I'm more of a hero than you are. That man that ran away he--he--duped me. This car--will you listen--this car--"
"It's stolen; I know," said Peter.
"It was stolen but it isn't stolen," Pee-wee fairly screamed. "Can't a thing be stolen and then not stolen? ”

“ Every Volume Complete in Itself.
All readers of the Tom Slade and the Roy Blakeley books are acquainted with Pee-wee Harris. These stories record the true facts concerning his size (what there is of it) and his heroism (such as it is) , his voice, his clothes, his appetite, his friends, his enemies, his victims. ”

“ Pee-wee demanded. "You mean you want to discover it? I'm the discoverer of this desert island."
The fellow from Edgemere seemed rather amused at Pee-wee. "All we want to do," he said, "is to use it to beat the Bridgeboro High School in the rowing match. We just want to row around it. The two crews will start from the boat-house and race upstream and around this island and back. Now that won't hurt the island any, will it? In a few minutes it will be all over except the shouting."
"Shall we let them do it?" Pee-wee whispered to Townsend. ”

“ All aboard for Goodale Manor Farm!”
CHAPTER XXV
PEE-WEE’S LUCK “Oh, just look, there’s a team of oxen!” said Miss Pocahontas Gamer; “isn’t it nice and primitive? And look at the boy! He’s got streamers all over his head! Oh, he looks like a circus clown.”
“I’m a boy scout,” said Pee-wee with withering scorn.
A closer approach to the dismantled and hapless float revealed the awful truth to the bewildered little party. There, upon the primitive fender above one of the wheels, sat Scout Harris dangling his legs, the picture of rakish abandonment. ”

“ They were uttered by Scout Harris who was so humane that he loved butterflies because they reminded him of butter and who would not harm a piece of pudding-stone because it aroused his tender recollections of pudding.
“I’m going to brand him to-morrow night!” he repeated cruelly. “Is there any pie left in the pantry?”
What act of inhuman cruelty he meditated against the poor, defenseless pie only his own guilty conscience knew. Before his mother was able to answer him from upstairs he had branded a piece of pie with his teeth.
Pee-wee’s mother did not come down, but she put her foot down. ”

“ Pee-wee said; “so that’s all I’m going to say.”
Silence is confession. Sympathea Softe held up her arms in horrified despair. Katherine Kindheart stared at Pee-wee with surprised and stony eyes. Dorothy Docile shuddered, looking at him as if he were a curiosity. And still he was silent. He could not speak. A scout’s honor is to be trusted.
“I can keep a secret if girls can’t!” he suddenly shouted in mingled defense and recrimination.
“A secret,” moaned Cousin Prudence. “Oh, he did it in secret. Thank goodness, poor, dear Mother isn’t here.”
As for Grove and Artie, they had not expected this. ”

“ By mid-afternoon the ramshackle old combination of house and wagon was resplendent in its particolored holiday array. The old hay wagon, which creaked as if it had rheumatism in its aged joints, appeared to have renewed its youth, its dried and shrunken boards concealed like wrinkles under the all-pervading makeup of gaudy bunting.
Pee-wee was straddling the roof, ready to throw the end of a rainbow streamer down to his partner when suddenly he beheld a Ford car standing in the road, its single occupant craning his neck in the direction of the barnyard. ”

“ I can tell it,” said Aunt Jamsiah. “You come right in the kitchen.”
“I had a lot of frankfurters and things at the places along the highway,” Pee-wee said. “I had waffles at one place. I bet they make a lot of money along that road selling things. There are shacks all the way. All the autoists stop and buy things to eat. You can get tires and everything.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to eat tires,” said Pepsy.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” Pee-wee said.
“What are your soldier clothes for?” the girl wanted to know.
“They’re not soldier clothes,” Pee-wee said; “I’m a scout.” ”

“ Pee-wee said. "Gee whiz, I never took a ride with thieves before. But anyway it's going to be all right now. We'll just toot the horn in front of the house when we get there, hey? And I'll say--I'll say--'Here's your car Mr. Bartlett.' And then I'll introduce you to him, hey? And I bet he'll--anyway, you wouldn't take anything, would you? Money or anything like that?"
"Don't insult me," said Mr. Swiper.
"I didn't mean it," Pee-wee said apologetically; "scouts are like that, they won't take anything for a service, but eats don't count, you can take eats. ”

“ Let’s start in and maybe later there’ll be some summer boarders in Berryville. We’ll have waffles—I can make those. And we’ll have lemonade and fruit and all kinds of things and when you’re doing your chores I’ll tend counter. We’ll make a lot of money, you see if we don’t.”
In her generous confidence, Pepsy was quite carried away by Pee-wee’s enthusiasm. She knew (who better than she?) that strangers never came along that lonely by-road. But she believed that somehow they would come when the scout waved his magic wand. ”

“ Parents did not trouble him, he ate them alive.
"You leave them to me," he said to Pee-wee as they advanced against poor defenseless Bridgeboro. "They'll either consent or we'll shoot up the town, hey, Safety First? We're on the rampage to-night; somebody's been feeding us meat."
It was not Pee-wee's custom to leave a thing to somebody else. He attended to everything--meals, awards, hikes, ice cream cones, camping localities, duffel lists, parents, everything. He was the world's champion fixer. You can see for yourselves what a triumph he made of not rescuing the wrong car. ”

“ Great was the excitement at the Snailsdale House in the morning. “It’s thrilling,” Hope said, as she examined the excavation with several curious old ladies. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Those fellers—they always have adventures,” Pee-wee told her. “You can even find treasure on—you can even find it on fire escapes—sometimes. Gee whiz, you should never go hunting for something like you did, because you never find it, that’s sure.”
CHAPTER XXXV
PEE-WEE, SCOUT Before the morning was very old the family secret of the Skimpers was out. ”

“ Pee-wee said, “you can write notes to the feller across the aisle and he can hold them over the radiator and then read them. But don’t ever tell anybody; don’t ever tell any girls because they can’t keep secrets.”
“Can’t I tell my sister?” Willie asked.
“No, sisters are even worse than regular girls,” said Pee-wee; “sisters are the worst kind. Now I’ll tell you what you have to do. You sit here on this float and watch it till I get back, then we’ll sail out on the lake with sealed orders ”

“ Slowly, with its great nickel headlights glaring, the big machine moved forward toward the obstruction. It stopped, then advanced very slowly a few feet more. Then, with heart thumping, Pee-wee beheld something which made his blood run cold—a bright-colored shawl with spangles that shone brilliant in the moonlight and a dusky woman with a bandage around her forehead.
But this was not all. For sitting at the wheel was the most villainous looking man that Pee-wee had ever seen, a man with a mustache of a pirate or a Spanish brigand. ”

“ Probably no army ever mobilized had such profound confidence in their commander as these two staring-eyed little fellows had for Pee-wee. To them he was not only a star scout, he was the whole firmament. One of them came from Connecticut, the other from New York, and neither had scout affiliations prior to their admission into Pee-wee’s organization. The rule that none but scouts should visit camp was often waived to welcome some lone and budding tenderfoot into the community. ”