A BIG IDEA

They had been driving the cows home during this learned exposition on scouting. Two things were now perfectly clear to Pepsy’s simple mind. One, that she would be loyal at any cost, loyal to her new friend, and through him to all the scouts. She knew them only through him. They were a race of wonder-workers away off in the surging metropolis of Bridgeboro. She could not aspire to be one of them, but she could be loyal, she could “stick up” for them.

The other matter which was now settled, once and for all, was that it was all right to throw a tomato at a person you hated provided only that you hit the mark. Aunt Jamsiah had been all wrong in her anger at that exploit which had stirred the village. For to throw a tomato at the son of Lawyer Gamely was aiming very high.

The son of Lawyer Gamely had a Ford and worked in the bank at Baxter City and was a mighty sport who wore white collars and red ties and said that “Everdoze was asleep and didn’t have brains enough to lie down,” and all such stuff.

Pee-wee let down the bars while the patient cows waited, and Scout Wiggle (knowing that a scout should be helpful) gave the last cow a snip on the leg to help her along.

Here, at these rustic bars, ended Pepsy’s chores for the day and in the delightful interval before supper she and Pee-wee lolled in the wellhouse by the roadside. Wiggle, with characteristic indecision, chased the cows a few yards, returned to his companions, darted off to chase the cows again, deserted that pastime with erratic suddenness, and returned again wagging his tail and looking up intently as if to ask, “What next?” Then he lay down panting. Mr. Ellsworth, Pee-wee’s scoutmaster, would have said that Wiggle lacked method....

“If I had a lot of money,” Pepsy said, “you could teach me all the things that scouts know and I’d pay you ever so much. Once I had forty cents but I spent it at the Mammoth Carnival. I paid ten cents to throw six balls so I could get a funny doll and I never hit the doll and when I only had ten cents left I made believe the doll was Deadwood Gamely and I hated and hated with all my might while I threw the ball the last six times but I couldn’t hit the doll.”

“You can’t aim so good when you’re mad,” Pee-wee said, “so if you want to hit somebody with a tomato or an egg or anything like that you must have kind thoughts about the person that you’re aiming at, only you’re not supposed to throw tomatoes and eggs and things because you can have more fun eating them. I wouldn’t waste a tomato on that feller because anyway you’ve got your tongue.”

“You can’t sass him,” said Pepsy, “because he uses big words and he’s such a smarty and he makes you feel silly and then you begin to cry and get mad. When he says I’m an orphan and things—and things—Wiggle hates him, too, don’t you, Wiggle?” The girl was almost crying then and Pee-wee comforted her.

“Do you think I don’t know any long words?” he said. “I know some of the longest words that were ever invented and—and—even I can make special ones myself. Once I—don’t you cry—once I was kept in in school and Julia Carson was kept in too, because she wriggled in her seat—you know how girls do. I had to choose a word and write it a hundred times and I didn’t want to get through too soon, because I wanted to get out the same time she did. So I chose the word incomprehensibility, and I—”

“Is that girl pretty?” Pepsy wanted to know. “She’s got a wart on her finger. It’s the best one I ever saw,” Pee-wee said. “She’s afraid to get in a boat, that girl is.”

“I hate her,” Pepsy said.

“What for?” Pee-wee inquired. “Because she has a wart? Don’t you know it’s good luck to have warts?”

“Because—because she was bad and had to stay after school,” Pepsy said.

“That shows how much you know about logic,” Pee-wee said, “because I had to stay too and I was worse than she was. So there.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid to get in a boat,” Pepsy said proudly.

“I never said she was like 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? We’ll say the tents are from both of us and we’ll have a lot of fun.”

“I had a dollar once and I sent it to the heathens,” Pepsy said, “and I’d rather help you than the heathens, because I like you better.”

“Heathens are all right,” Pee-wee said, “and I’m not saying anything against heathens, especially wild ones, but we’re just as wild. You ought to go to Temple Camp and see how wild we are.”

He did not look very wild as he sat upon the narrow seat with his knees drawn up and his scout hat on the back of his head showing his curly hair. The girl gazed at his natty khaki attire, the row of merit badges on his sleeve, the trophies of his heroic triumphs. She was not the first to feel the lure of a uniform. But it was the first uniform she had ever seen at close range, for in the wartime she had been in that frowning brick structure which still haunted her.

“I’ll help you because you can do everything and you know a lot,” she said.

In the fullness of her generosity and loyalty to Pee-wee’s prowess she never reminded him or even thought of the things she could do which he could not. She would not do her little optional chore of milking a cow for fear he might perceive her superiority in this little item of proficiency. Poor girl, she was a better scout than she knew.

“If you think it up I’ll do all the work, and then we’ll be even,” she said.

So Pee-wee told her of the colossal scheme which his lively imagination had conceived.

“It all started with a hot frankfurter,” he said. “If I hadn’t bought a hot frankfurter I wouldn’t have thought of it. So that shows you how important a frankfurter is—kind of. Maybe a person might get to be a millionaire just starting with a frankfurter, you never can tell....”