HARD TIMES

If many people went to the carnival they must have approached it from the other direction. It was a small carnival and probably did not attract much interest outside of Berryville. A few stragglers passed Mr. Quig’s farm traveling in buck-boards and farm wagons, but they did not come from distant parts and evidently were not hungry. Some were so unscrupulous as to bring their lunches with them. One reckless farmer, indeed, bought a doughnut and exchanged it for another with a smaller hole.

Altogether the neighboring carnival did not bring much business to Pee-wee and Pepsy. Aunt Jamsiah took their enterprise good-naturedly; Uncle Ebenezer said it was a good thing to keep the children out of mischief. Miss Bellison, the young school teacher, bought ten cents’ worth of taffy each day as a matter of duty, and Beriah Bungel, the town constable, being a natural born grafter, helped himself to everything he wanted free of charge.

So the pleasant summer days passed and brought them little business. Occasionally some lonely auto would crawl along the foliage-arched road, its driver looking for a place to turn around so that he might get back out of his mistaken way. Most of these were too disgruntled at their mistakes and the quality of the road to heed the voice of the tempter who shouted at them, “Lemonade, ice cold! Get your lemonade here!” They usually answered by asking how they could get to West Baxter. And Pee-wee would answer, “You have to go four miles back, get your hot doughnuts here.” Then they would start back but they never, never got their hot doughnuts there.

If Pee-wee’s stout heart was losing hope he did not show it, but Pepsy was frankly in despair. In her free hours she sat in their little shelter, her thin, freckly hands busy with the worsted masterpiece that she was working. Pee-wee, at least, had his appetite to console him, but she had no relish for the stale lemonade and melting, oozy taffy which stood pathetically on the counter each night.

One day a lumbering, enclosed auto went by, an undertaker’s car it was, and Pepsy was seized with sudden fright lest it be the orphan asylum wagon come to get her. The two dominating thoughts of her simple mind were the fear that she would have to go back to “that place” and the hope that Pee-wee might get the money to buy those precious tents. She had learned something of scouting, that scouts camp and live in the open, and she had learned something of the good scout laws. She was witnessing now an exhibition of scout faith and resolution, of faith that was hopeless and resolution that was futile. She was soon to be made aware of another scout quality which fairly staggered her and left her wondering.