A REVELATION

“What are you laughing at?” Pee-wee demanded to know, as soon as he had regained his poise and dignity. “You’re as bad as they are.”

“I couldn’t help laughing,” Pepsy said remorsefully, “’specially when you fell down. You said you were going to handle them.”

“That could happen to the smartest man,” 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? I can handle scoutmasters even.” Pepsy was willing to believe anything of her hero and she said, “They were a lot of freshies and I hate them anyway.”

Pee-wee did not trouble himself about what the man had said. His chief interest was the dollar and ten cents of working capital which they now had and how to invest it. In his enthusiasm he had been rather premature in his advertisement of auto accessories and he now purposed to make good at least one of these announcements by commissioning Simeon Drowser to buy some ten-cent rolls of tire tape for him at Baxter City, whither Simeon went daily.

He started along the road to the post office where he hoped to catch Simeon before that worthy left for Baxter City. But he did not reach the post office. The first interruption to his progress was one of his own two-card signs staring him in the face from a roadside tree

He paused scowling before this novel announcement.

His gaze then wandered to a fence on which he read the astounding words:

Alas, the ground glass which should have appeared in place of pancakes did duty beneath the single word EAT on another tree nearby. Eat GROUND GLASS the hungry motorist was blithely advised.

Nor was this the worst. As Pee-wee penetrated deeper into the woods the more terrible was the masquerade of his own enticing signs. His stenciled cards, deserting their lawful mates, had struck up ghastly unions with other cards proclaiming frightful items of refreshment to the appalled wayfarer who was reminded of NON-SKID BANANAS and advised that OUR PEANUT TAFFY STICKS LIKE GLUE. The faithless TIRE TAPE which should have surmounted the STICK LIKE GLUE card was nestling under the fatal EAT, while FRANKFURTERS COLD AND COOLING and ICE CREAM SIZZLING HOT met Pee-wee’s astonished gaze. He stood looking at this awful sequel of his handiwork.

Most of the cards were besmeared with mud and one or two in such a freakish way as to give a curious turn to their meaning. On one card a mischievous little rivulet of mud or wetted ink had ingeniously changed a T into a crude R and the travelers read RUBES SOLD HERE.

Pee-wee contemplated this exhibition with dismay. Wherever he looked, on fence or tree, some ridiculous sign stared him in the face. He did not continue on to the post office but retraced his steps to the refreshment parlor which was the subject of these printed slanders.

He and Pepsy were discussing this miscarriage of their exploitation design when a shuffling sound in the distance proclaimed the shambling approach of the advertising department. And if Pee-wee had not made good his flaunting boast to handle the six merry maidens he at least made amends and regained somewhat of his heroic tradition in his handling of Licorice Stick.

“What did I tell you to do?” he shouted, his face red with terrible wrath. “What did I tell you to do? Do you know the way you put those cards up? You made fools of us, that’s what you did!”

“I done gone make no fools ob you, nohow,” Licorice Stick exclaimed. “I see a sperrit ’n I shakes like dat, I do. As shu I’m stan’ here I see a sperrit in dem woods.”

From a vivid and terrifying narrative the partners made out that while Licorice Stick was on his way to embellish the wayside in strict accordance with instructions, he had encountered a spirit from the other world in the form of the carnival clown whom we have seen pass our wayside rest.

The ghostly raiment of this lowly humorist and the motley decoration of his face had so frightened Licorice Stick that he had dropped his cards and retreated frantically into the woods. When the awful apparition had passed he had stealthily shuffled back to the spot and with many furtive glances about him had gathered up the cards with trembling hands, and proceeded to post them in pairs without regard to their proper order.

After this triumphant exploitation feat (which ought to commend him to every lying advertiser in the world) Licorice Stick had shuffled into a new path of glory, going to the carnival, where (not finding the sperrit in evidence) he had accepted a position to stand behind a piece of canvas with his head in an opening and allow people to throw baseballs at him.

On hearing this Pee-wee desisted from any further criticism. For, as he told Pepsy, “a scout has to be kind and forgiving, and besides when I go to the carnival I can plug him in the face with a baseball two or three times and then we’ll be square.”