"They should be pitied, not blamed," Westy said.
All of a sudden Pee-wee exploded. He sounded like a munition factory going up. "You think you"re smart, all of you, don"t you!" he hollered.
"A scout is smart," Westy said.
"A scout can do anything," I said.
"He is resourceful--it"s in the handbook," Wig said, very sober like.
"It"s in the handbook--it"s in the handbook--it"s in the handbook,"
Pee-wee fairly yelled, "that a scout has to be----"
"Helpful," I said; "he has to be helpful to women."
"You make me sick!" he fairly shrieked.
"You"ll be the one to make _us_ sick," Westy put in.
"Do you think I"m going to do that?" he fairly screamed; "do you think--do you think--do you think----"
"Three strikes out," Connie shouted.
"Do you think I"m a _fool_?" Pee-wee finished.
"_A scouts honor is to be trusted_," I said; (that"s scout law number one) "_if he were to violate his honor----_"
"You make me tired," Pee-wee yelled; "a scout has got to be _cautious_--it says so--he"s got to leap--I mean look--he"s, he"s got to consider others--just because somebody that ought to know how to do a thing that he doesn"t know how to do asks somebody to do something that the other person won"t learn to do if the other person does it for him, because that isn"t being resourceful, if somebody else does that thing for you, and so the other person doesn"t learn how to do it himself--do you mean--do you mean to tell me--that that"s being a good scout?"
"Sure it is," I told him; "it"s just the same as if a person that wants to do something, doesn"t do it because if he does, he won"t. Why then, how could the other person do something that somebody else wanted another person not to do----"
"You"d have to have a crowbar," Westy said.
"Pee-wee"s right and we"re wrong, as he usually is," Connie shouted.
CHAPTER XV
TO THE RESCUE
We made the plush seats up into beds that night and, oh, didn"t we sleep, with the breeze blowing in through the windows! It was dandy.
In the morning none of us said anything about dinner. That was funny, because most always that"s the princ.i.p.al thing we talk about on Sunday mornings, especially at Temple Camp. Once Wig said that he guessed the hike around the lake through the woods would make us good and hungry, and I noticed Pee-wee didn"t say anything. He was so still you could hear the silence.
Along about ten o"clock we saw the boat coming over. Two of the girls were in it, and each of them was rowing with one oar. The boat went swirling around in circles.
"That"s what they call the waltz stroke, I guess," Connie said; "they"d get along better if they had some dreamy music."
Westy gave me a sly wink and said, "If you can"t do a thing, do it anyway."
Pee-wee stood on the sh.o.r.e with a scowl on his face watching them. The girls were Grace Bentley and another one they called Pug Peters. They have awful funny nicknames for each other, girls do. They flopped against sh.o.r.e about fifty feet from where they intended to land, and they giggled as if they thought it was a lot of fun.
"This boat reminds me of a balky horse," Pug Peters said.
"It reminds me of a pin wheel," I told her.
"Oh, you needn"t talk," she said; "you started to go about five miles south and you landed eighty miles west--in your old car."
"Scouts aren"t afraid of long distances," I told her; "they don"t bother with little five-mile runs."
"Is he ready?" Grace Bentley asked.
"A scout is always ready," Westy told her; "that"s his middle name."
"And we"re not going to let him row, either," Pug Peters said.
"Aren"t you afraid he"ll get dizzy?" I said. "Remember his little head is full of recipes; two heaping teaspoonfuls to a half cup of milk----"
"Never you mind, Walter," she called to Pee-wee (because that"s his real name), "you just get right in."
Oh, boy! Laugh! I just sat down on the bank and began to roar. Pee-wee didn"t care anything about rowing. He didn"t care about anything, I guess. He was in a state of cromo, or whatever you call it. He just got in and sat down in the stern seat as if he was going to be executed.
"Aren"t you going to show them how to row?" Connie called out, as the girls stood up in the boat, each with an oar, trying to push off.
But Pee-wee wasn"t going to show them anything.
"We"ll show _him_ we can do something," they said.
Pretty soon they got off and the last we saw of Pee-wee he was sitting like a nice little boy scout in the stern of the boat. Every time the boat swerved around in a circle, we could see his face, all sober and scowling. The boat went every which way, one girl giving a long pull and the other breaking her stroke and almost losing her oar. But what cared they, yo, ho? Sometimes the boat seemed to be coming back to us, and then we could see Scout Harris sitting there with his knees together, looking fierce and terrible, like Billikins with a grouch. The rowing wasn"t much of a joke to him.
We allowed about an hour and a half for hiking around through the woods.
We didn"t think it would take that long, but we knew the land was low and we guessed that the lake might run into marshes. Safety first. But we found a trail in the woods and it was easy going. So the way it happened, we got to _Camp Smile Awhile_ a little before twelve instead of at one. It was lucky for _Camp Smile Awhile_ that reinforcements reached the b.l.o.o.d.y scene in time to save the day--I mean the dinner.
The first thing we saw was a good-sized tent and the next--oh, _Christopher Columbus_, what a sight! Talk about the West Front!
There were girls sitting all around on the ground, simply screaming.
Close to the fireplace, that was made out of stones, stood Pee-wee with a great big white ap.r.o.n on that went right down to his feet.
"It--it--would have been all right if I hadn"t tripped," we heard him say; "that could happen----"
"Look at him," I said to the fellows; "only look at him. He looks like the end of a perfect day."
All over his hair was yellow stuff, and there was flour on his face and all over his stockings and shoes. There were big black smootches on his face, too. He had a can in one hand and a girls" curling iron in the other and a big greasy frying pan under one arm.
We were about a hundred feet off, among the trees, and we just stood there staring and trying not to scream.