IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE

Permission to use the wellhouse once secured, preparations for the vast enterprise progressed rapidly. The very next day, while Pepsy was at her chores, Pee-wee built a counter in the shack and sitting at this he printed signs to be displayed along the woody approaches to this mouth-watering dispensary.

Neither the gloomy predictions of his uncle nor the laughing skepticism of his aunt dimmed his enterprising ardor. The signs which he printed with his uncle’s crate stencil, procured from the barn, bespoke the variety of tempting offerings which existed so far only in his fertile mind.

He was somewhat handicapped in the preparation of these signs by the largeness of the perforated letters of the stencil and the limited size of the cards. He had preferred cards to paper because they would not blow and tear and Aunt Jamsiah had given him a pile of these, uniform in size, on one side of which had been printed election notices of the previous year. It was impossible, therefore, for Pee-wee to include all of each tempting announcement on one card, so he used two cards for each reminder to the public. Thus on one card he printed FRANKFURTERS and on its mate intended for posting just below, the palate-tickling conclusion, SIZZLING HOT.

This is how the sign would appear upon some fence or tree. It would be a knockout blow to any hungry wayfarer.

Another two-card sign, intended for warmer weather, read:

Other signs originating in Pee-wee’s fertile mind and covering the range of food and drink and auto accessories were these:

There were many others, enough to decorate the road for miles in both directions. If Pepsy as chef could live up to Pee-wee’s promises the neighborhood would soon become famous. That was her one forlorn hope, that the fame of their offerings would get abroad and lure the traffic from its wonted path. But Pee-wee’s enthusiasm and energy carried all before them like a storming column and she was soon as hopeful and confident as he.

When her chores were finished that afternoon she hurried to their refreshment parlor, where Pee-wee sat behind the new counter like a stern schoolmaster, cards strewn about him, his round face black with stencil ink, still turning out advertising bait for the public.

“I don’t care what they say,” she panted; “we’re going to make a lot of money and buy the tents. I tripped on the third step in the house just now and that means surely we’ll have good luck and I can help just as much as if I was a really truly scout, can’t I? Aunt Jamsiah says if I make a lot of doughnuts you’ll just eat them all and there won’t be any to sell. We mustn’t eat the things ourselves, must we?”

“That shows how much she knows,” Pee-wee said; “we might have to do that to make the people hungry. If they see me eating a doughnut and looking very happy, won’t that make them want to buy some? We have upkeep expenses, don’t we?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell her that,” Pepsy said, “but I never thought of it. You always think of things. I’m going to wash the ink off your face, so hold still.”

She dipped her gingham apron under the trap-door in the flooring where the clear, cool water was, and taking his chin in her coarse little freckly hands, washed the face of her hero and partner. And meanwhile Wiggle tugged on her apron as if he thought she were inflicting some injury upon the boy.

So blinded was Pee-wee by this vigorous bath and so preoccupied the others that for the moment none of them noticed the young fellow of about twenty who, with hat tilted rakishly on the side of his head and cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, stood in the road watching them.