HANDLING THE CROWD

The sun was just poking through the mist and conjuring the beady particles of moisture into tiny jewels when our heroes with their rather bedraggled outfit moved triumphantly up the main street of Snailsdale Manor to the village square. It seemed as if the great orb had deliberately waited to make an effective entrance into the festivities.

Since Pee-wee’s float was the only one which had come from a distance, the others had escaped the blighting effects of long exposure and they formed a carnival of originality and color as they stood clustered on the green, waiting to be drawn into line.

Some were motor driven, as the express vehicles and the buses, but most of them were drawn by horses.

Every auto in the village (and nine tenths of them were Fords) was decorated and filled with city folk in holiday spirit and attire. Wheelbarrows and bicycles, too, were pressed into service. Youths on draped stilts strutted about, waiting. A thriving business was going on in candy and lemonade. Flags and hotel pennants were everywhere. One bicycle with a bathtub conveyance beside it was occupied by a child in the briefest of bathing customs, waving soap and towel.

It must be confessed that the irrepressible Pee-wee felt a little chagrin amid this motley assemblage. Poor Simon was visibly flustered and ill at ease. Our hero beheld all about him designs and color schemes and rolling architectural conceptions which put his modest caravan to shame. Even Hope’s tasteful draping, now wilted and heavy with moisture, did not redeem the grotesque van from a certain amateur crudeness that stuck out all over it. It had looked very fine in the Goodale barnyard, but now, alas, among that galaxy of art and ingenuity supported by free expenditure poor Pee-wee’s much flaunted float seemed cheap and rough and commonplace. His boasted luck seemed at last to have deserted him; he was even subdued by the consciousness of failure, as he gazed wide-eyed at the festive scene all about him.

Almost ashamed, his eyes sought out the float of the Snailsdale House, and there it was, a veritable rolling lawn, with his faithless partner lying in a hammock strung between two imitation trees. There were several children on the float, too, and ladies playing cards and Straw-hat Braggen (apparently faithless to his flivver) was there in all his glory.

Hope jumped down and came tripping over to greet the boys from the farm. “I think your float looks “perfectly lovely” she said, which she did not think at all, “and it just makes me homesick to see that sign. And just to think of you two coming all the way from Goodale Farm! It’s like—a—caravan from—you know—from Arizona!”

“Anyway, we’re going to have two quarts of ice cream,” said Pee-wee, too honest to let himself be deceived about his outlandish contribution to the pageant.

“There’s just a perfect army of city people coming up to-night,” Hope said; “and we’re just going to be packed like sardines. Everett wanted me to ride in his car with him—”

“It isn’t a car, it’s a Ford,” said Pee-wee.

“You’re horrid! But I was afraid I’d be just jounced to death and would be all tired out for to-night. You know we’re going to have a dance at the house to-night. And I’ll let you into a little secret too. You know those two perfectly lovely fellows that are coming up—from Hydome University? Mr. Skimper is going to have them represent us in the tennis match and they’re experts, they’ve both won prizes. Just imagine! And the Hotel Packem thinks their team is going to win! Isn’t it excruciating? Oh, you must surely come and see us win!”

If the sign on Pee-wee’s lumbering vehicle made Hope homesick, it had quite a different effect upon the joyous, flippant rabble. It was the one, conspicuous, outstanding feature of Pee-wee’s outfit and it aroused unholy mirth on every hand. This was especially so as the other floats and marching units passed it to form in line.

“Hey, sign, where are you going with the wagon?” called one of the summer wits.

“Hey float, where are you going with the fool?” Pee-wee promptly retorted. He was the equal of any at this kind of thing. He sat on the peak of his roof, ready to meet all comers.

“Is that sign meant to cover the wagon or is it meant to cover the farm?” another joker shouted, and several girls carolled forth their appreciation of his wit.

“It’s meant to cover your mouth only it isn’t big enough,” Pee-wee roared.

“Where the dickens is Goodale Manor Farm?” someone queried.

“You go nineteen thousand miles through the woods and take the second turn to your left,” some one answered.

“Then you jump in the well,” Pee-wee shouted. Simon was greatly edified at the ease with which his small companion handled the passing show.

“What ails Goodale’s Farm?” a couple of young fellows began singing.

“What’s the good of Goodale’s,” another wit chimed in.

“What’s the good of all the snails in Snailsdale?” Pee-wee shouted at the top of his voice, which caused much laughter. “All the snails came out of their shells to-day. They come out when it rains!”

Indeed he looked funny enough straddling the old roof, with his gaudy turban falling about his head and his mouth besmeared with jam.

“They grow big signs daown that thar farm,” shouted a young mimic. “Haow’s the geese daown thar?”

“All right, I’ll tell them their brother was asking after them,” Pee-wee answered.

“Haow’s the pigs?” piped up another voice.

“Fine. How are all your family?” Pee-wee shot back.

He was too engrossed with the zest of battle to be disappointed now; he was in his element.

“Haow’s tomatoes?” the young mimic shouted.

For answer he received a demonstration which effectually convinced him that tomatoes were both ripe and soft. A hard boiled egg was next seized for light artillery use, but Pee-wee couldn’t bring himself to part with that and he decided just in the nick of time to eat it.

He laughs best who laughs last, and Pee-wee laughed last in one sense at least, for he was the last in the procession. The officials of the pageant did not give Simon a chance to drive into line until there wasn’t any more line, and the oxen had to be urged to speed ahead in a frantic search for it. They proceeded at the breakneck pace of about two miles an hour and caught up with it around the corner.

Every circus must have its clown and every pack its joker, and on such terms Pee-wee was not unwelcome at the tail of the parade. Perhaps it was appropriate that Goodale Farm, the last place in creation, should have the last float in the parade. It caused unstinted laughter along the way, chiefly because of its great sign which was bigger than that on the Commercial Hotel and its small scout who was almost as small as the weather-vane on the same hotel and fully able, like the weather-vane, to handle the situation from any direction.

The trouble was with the oxen which kept falling behind, going first in second, then in first gear, until they finally stalled altogether in front of the Snailsdale Ice Cream Parlor. Whether they had been bribed to do this it is impossible to say.