DIPLOMACY

I left the fellows where they were and went across the street, keeping straight west. Away over on the ridge, beyond the river and beyond Little Valley, I could see the big tree good and clear against the sky. It seemed sort of lonely up there. I said to myself, “You wait, old tree, we’re coming straight along.” Gee whiz, I was kind of glad that our destination was a tree and not some building or other. You’ll never catch me planting the Silver Fox emblem on the roof of an apartment house. I’m not saying anything against buildings, but one thing, I have no use for them. My mother says it’s good to have a roof over your head, but I’d rather have it underneath me because you can have more fun climbing over it, that’s what I told her. That’s why I believe in roofs. But I like trees better. I like trees better than anything except holidays. The thing I like worst of all is algebra.

I went straight over to that house and stopped on the sidewalk right plunk in front of the part of the porch that sticks out past the end of the house. Then I gave the Silver Fox call good and loud. As soon as Pee-wee heard me he started shouting it through the megaphone. It sounded like a Silver Fox with a cold.

Pretty soon the door opened, and—good night, there was Warde Hollister.

I said, “Tag, you’re It. Will you please come down here on neutral territory? We belong to the League of Notions and we can’t cross any frontiers—I mean front yards.”

He said, “What do you want here?”

I said, “Answered in the affirmative. We’re here because we’re here and the end of your front porch is in the way. It sticks out like the West Front just before the armistice.”

“You must be crazy,” he said.

“Positively guaranteed,” I told him. “We’re so crazy that a crazy quilt is sensible compared to us.”

“If you want to see me, come up here,” he said. “Are you afraid to come up?”

“Afraid?” I said. “Didn’t we go right into the same film with President Harding? Who’s afraid of you? Not I, quoth he. I can’t come up because I can’t go off the track and your front steps are about thirty feet too far north.”

“You’re one of those scouts,” he said.

“Tell me something new,” I said; “did you think I didn’t know that? Maybe you don’t know I’m a famous movie star; we’re all stars, we’re known as the big dipper. Did you ever hear of Douglas Saving Banks?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Well, I’m not him,” I told him. “Come on down, will you?”

He looked across the street and saw the rest of the fellows and I guess he must have seen the big leather box with Copley Film Corporation on it. Anyway, he just stared. Then he came over to the end of the porch and sat on the railing and said,

“What do you want, anyway? One of you fellows was here yesterday. I told him I didn’t want to bother with you.”

“That was my official staff,” I said. “We don’t bother with him either; we carry him as excess baggage. That’s the Japanese junk man. Did you ever hear that song? It’s dedicated to him. We should worry about the scouts. But you see this is the way it is. We’ve got the movie people after us and we can’t get rid of them. They’re trying to stir up a new war here in Bridgeboro after everything is all peaceful again and school is closed. We’re on a bee-line hike to a big tree over on west ridge, and we have to go straight no matter what’s in the way. Gee whiz, it’s not much fun.

“But, anyway, that big fellow thinks if we try to climb across your porch it will be a good idea for you to come out and look very grouchy and try to stop us; maybe you could look that way if you tried to, hey? And then we’ll be very sweet and nice and give you a big hunk of candy and you’ll say the boy scouts are all right and you’d like to join them. Of course you don’t have to really join them. All you have to do is be in the animated news, all the world in pictures, right in the same film with President Harding. Maybe you wouldn’t care to be a movie actor, hey? You should worry, it will soon be over. Mr. Gilligan, he just wants to show how fellows get to be scouts. It’s propaganda. After it’s all over you can go in the house again, and we’ll beat it for the river. You don’t have to really join, it’s only in the picture. See? It won’t be a real chunk of candy we hand you so as to show that we’re kind and generous. It will be a rock. But it will look like candy. It will be rockcandy.”

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