MAKING PLANS

“I bought that frankfurter at a shack up on the highway and while I was eating it I just happened to think that as long as there’s lots of fruit and things here and as long as you know how to make fudge, we’d start a shack right here in this wellhouse and sell lemonade and fruit and fudge and cookies and things, and if we make lots of money I’d go up to Baxter City and buy some auto accessories like spark plugs and tire tape and things and we’d sell those, too. We’d put signs on the trees along the road telling people to stop here and I know how to make up signs so as to get people good and hungry. You have them say that things are hot in the pan and you have to have drinks with names like arctic and all like that. I know how to make them hungry and thirsty and I’ve got a balloon that I can blow up—see? And we’d print something on it and tie it to Wiggle’s tail and make him walk up and down the road. What do you say? Isn’t it a peachy scheme? Will you help me?”

No dream of Pee-wee’s could be impossible of fulfillment. With him, to try was to succeed, according to Pepsy’s simple and unbounded faith. 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.

“And that’s everybody that goes by except a few when they have the town fair in Berryville.”

For a moment Pee-wee paused, balked but not beaten. “There’s going to be an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show in Berryville,” he said, “and the town fair, that’s two things. 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.

“And I’ll make cookies,” she said, “and all the things to eat and you can print the signs—”

“And shout to the people going by,” Pee-wee concluded enthusiastically. “You have to yell ALL HOT! THEY’RE ALL HOT! Just like that.”

Few could resist this, Pepsy least of all. “Let’s go and ask Aunt Jamsiah about it right now,” she said.

“Let me do it, I know how to handle her,” said Pee-wee.

And Pepsy deferred to the master mind, as usual....