A VISION OF SPLENDOR

The next morning Pee-wee made a great discovery in the loft of the carriage house. This was a large sign at least six feet long and more than a foot wide, containing in glaring paint the words:

It was evidently a souvenir of the hopeful days when the partition between the sitting rooms had been taken down. Pee-wee dragged it to the kitchen door and consulted Mr. Goodale, who was drying his hands there.

“Waal, now, that’ll jes’ suit you, won’t it?” said Mr. Goodale. “I never know’d abaout it bein’ poked away till you pulled it out. That was goin’ ter be nailed up between the gate-posts out yonder, ony it never was,” he said wistfully. “’Member that sign, mother?” Mrs. Goodale paused in her cake making to look reminiscently at the dust-covered memorial of shattered hopes. “Carl Jellif painted that sign; I give ’m ten dollars. He was a city painter he was, slick ez a school marm on spellin’ and fancy stuff. He wuz out here ter paint the station up ter Snailsdale n’ he boarded daown here while he done th’ County Fair work. He died uv th’ flu, he did.” Mr. Goodale paused, his face half dry, to indulge in these memories. “You take it and use it, sonny,” he concluded.

It nevers rains but it pours and that same morning Hope Stillmore came gingerly across the mud of the barnyard with an armful of old, faded bunting and a couple of good-sized American flags, the spoils of an extended exploration of the attic.

“We found a gold mine in the attic,” she chirped. “Just look at all this lovely stuff; it was used in the County Fair when Mr. Goodale was on the committee, and Mrs. Goodale says we can use it, and I’m going to help you decorate if you’ll let me. I’m going to do it because of what you did for me—because you saved my life.”

“Are you going to be partners with me?” Pee-wee asked delightedly.

“Yes, I’m going to be partners with you and we’re going to decorate it together, so there.” She did not tell him that her mother had shamed her into this. Her interest, once aroused, seemed genuine, at all events.

“And are you going to ride on the float with me?”

“Yes, I am, I don’t care what. So now.”

“After the parade’s over I’m going to treat you to ice cream in Snailsdale,” Pee-wee said.

“Won’t that be lovely!”

“Fifteen-cent plates.”

“Oh, scrumptious!”

“And when lots of people come here it will be your good turn as well as mine, hey? Because, gee whiz, Mr. Goodale, he’s a peach of a man. And, besides, maybe there’ll be a lot of big fellers come, too, and then I bet you’ll be glad, hey? Gee whiz, that’ll be doing more for you than saving you from a rattlesnake, hey?” Indeed, it would have been somewhat in the nature of saving her life.

“We’re not going to think about anything except just the float,” Hope said. “So let’s start right in.”

“And we’re sure going to be partners for keeps?”

“Honest and true, just like in a story.”

“Gee, I’ve met a lot of girls, but I like you better than any of them, that’s one sure thing.”

“Well, I know a lot of boys—”

“I bet you know as many as a hundred.”

“And you’re braver than any of them. That’s one sure thing. And you know all about the woods.”

“I know all about getting lost in them,” Pee-wee said. “Anyway you’re prettier than Roy Blakeley’s sister. Just because I didn’t keep asking you that doesn’t mean I don’t like you better than anybody else. Lots of people would be partners with me only they’re too busy. But I’d rather have you for a partner than anybody. I’m going to get you some candy on the day of the parade. I bet fellers take you to the movies, don’t they?”

“I said we weren’t going to think of anything but the float,” Hope reproved him.

“But I can say I like you, can’t I?”

“Yes, but let’s get to work.”

The work began auspiciously enough, Hope dealing her finger a blow with the hammer. Everything went along swimmingly and the wheels of the hay wagon began to look quite gay and festive with the spokes wrapped in bunting and with bunting rosettes surmounting the old hubs. It was surprising how the girl knew just where to begin and how her nimble fingers made graceful loops and knots here and there.

Pee-wee was delighted as the morning passed in this pleasant comradeship and cooperation. They went in when the dinner bell rang, full of artistic and striking conceptions for the afternoon’s work, and at the table talked of their plans. It seemed likely that the afternoon would see the work well on its way toward completion. Hope seemed quite under the spell of Pee-wee’s enthusiasm (which was potent), and so for Pee-wee, he could not do justice to his dinner by reason of talking, and he could not do justice to his enthusiastic talk by reason of his dinner. He wrestled with both valiantly.

But the joyous progress was too good to last. By mid-afternoon the ramshackle old combination of house and wagon was resplendent in its particolored holiday array. The old hay wagon, which creaked as if it had rheumatism in its aged joints, appeared to have renewed its youth, its dried and shrunken boards concealed like wrinkles under the all-pervading makeup of gaudy bunting.

Pee-wee was straddling the roof, ready to throw the end of a rainbow streamer down to his partner when suddenly he beheld a Ford car standing in the road, its single occupant craning his neck in the direction of the barnyard. Even at the distance of some thirty yards or so, Pee-wee recognized the aggressive, cock-sure pose and demeanor of the staring driver.

It was Straw-hat Braggen.