THE FATEFUL GUM-DROP

Pee-wee sat upon the railing of the porch reading the handbook and eating gum-drops. The particular gum-drop with which we are conceived was black, symbolic of the dark cloud which overhung Pee-wee. He wore his negligee scout attire. His scout hat was on the back of his head exposing his curly hair.

Upon his round countenance was the well-known scowl which was partly the result of his deep schemings and cogitations and partly the result of his defensive attitude toward the troop, and toward Roy Blakeley in particular. It was not the scowl of ill nature. Rather was it the scowl of a hero. It seemed to say, “Come on, you bunch of jolliers, I can handle you!” It was a scowl that no artist could paint. It was a tremendous scowl to be worn by such a small boy, and it was said in the troop that this was the cause of his being top-heavy and falling off roofs and fences, and diving into cracker jars and provision barrels. Certain it is that wherever Pee-wee went, he went head first.

It may have been because his left stocking was afraid of his scowl that it always shrank from it, pursuing a downward course, and the act of pulling up his stocking had become second nature to Pee-wee, so that he did it instinctively whenever he started or stopped, whether it was necessary or not.

He traveled in two directions, horizontally and vertically. When he traveled horizontally he usually went scout pace. And when he went up in the air (which he did on an average of a hundred times a day) he traveled by means of his voice, which was of such volume as to strike terror. With the exception of the inside of his head, the parts of him which were most crowded to capacity were his pockets. To say that his brain was like an attic would be doing it an injustice. Rather was it like a rummage sale or like San Francisco after the earthquake.

There is no word in the English language suitable to describe Pee-wee’s appetite. Though he carried bananas stuck in his belt like cartridges and was usually provisioned with innumerable cookies, it cannot be said that he ate between meals, since his life consisted of one continuous meal. But he scrupulously observed one intermission from eating and that was the time spent in sleeping. Ingenious though he was, and full of inspirations, he had never hit on an idea for sleeping and eating at the same time.

When Pee-wee stood upon the ground he was exactly four feet and three-sixteenths of an inch high, but when he went up in the air his greatness baffles description. When in scout negligee he always wore his sleeves rolled up which somehow bespoke his terrible combativeness. When he wore his jacket a score of merit badges were displayed instead of his bare arms. These were interspersed with campaign and advertising buttons. Upon the front of his scout hat was a lone button as large as a fifty-cent piece, advising the beholder to use Rizeman’s Yeast. Perhaps this was the secret of Pee-wee’s going up in the air so readily.

Need I conclude this faithful description by saying that Pee-wee was an all-around scout of the first class? When he held up his right hand with the three middle fingers extended, they reminded him of the three helpings of dessert which he often had at Temple Camp, and he remembered the twelve good scout laws because they were an even dozen like ten cents’ worth of licorice jawbreakers.

So there he sat upon the railing of his porch looking over the camping hints in the scout handbook and eating gum-drops. Suddenly he dropped a gum-drop, a black one, and as he slid down from the railing in quest of it in the flower-bed below, his handbook slipped out of his other hand and fell among the bushes.

He first recovered the black gum-drop, and having dusted it off, placed it where it would never again go down except inside him. Then he lifted the handbook and casually noticed that it had fallen open at pages four hundred and four and four hundred and five. These were in the section describing scout games, and, as Pee-wee glanced half-interestedly at the headings, his idle gaze was arrested by a particular heading and he read the paragraph which followed it:

One patrol pitted against another to see who can get a message sent a long distance in shortest time by means of relay of runners (or cyclists). The patrol is ordered out to send in three successive notes or tokens (such as sprigs of certain plants) from a point, say, two miles distant or more. The leader in taking his patrol out to the spot drops scouts at convenient distances, who will then act as runners from one post to the next and back. If relays are posted in pairs, messages can be passed both ways.

Suddenly, with a wild hallo, he announced to the world at large, “I’ve got an inspiration! I’ve got an inspiration! I’m glad I dropped that gum-drop, because I’ve got an inspiration! I know what I’m going to do! I’ve got a peach of an idea! Oh, boy, I know what I’m going to do!”

He did not know what he was going to do, far from it. But he knew what he thought he was going to do.

“I’m going to—I’m going to start something!” he said in the full exuberance of his new idea.

Never in all his life did Scout Harris, Alligator, formerly Raven and Pollywog, say a truer word. He was certainly going to start something.