A LITTLE BIT OFF THE TOP

We liked that verse so much that we made another one.

Westy said, “If they have a row of wooden scouts up here with the words always on top underneath, that will make a good ad, hey? I wonder how much they’d pay us to sit here all the time?”

“Labor is very high,” I said; “about ten feet up. Maybe they’d give us some hats.”

“Everything is going up,” Westy said; “let’s go down.”

“Wait till the train goes by,” I said. “I’d like Mr. Cow to see us, or whatever his name is.”

Then Westy began singing:

Then Dorry started,

And then I sung out,

Then Pee-wee started yelling,

“We ought to get a dollar an hour for this,” Warde said.

I said, “Aren’t you satisfied? Haven’t we made you famous? Right away you want to pass the plate.”

“You mean the hat,” Westy said.

“This is the Brown’s Hat Patrol,” Will said. “They’re superstitious, they believe in signs.”

“Listen, here comes the train,” somebody said.

“Sit up and look pretty,” Dorry shouted.

“We’ve got all the signs on Broadway beaten,” Hunt said.

“Sure,” I said, “this is a live sign, full of pep. All sit up straight when the train passes. Remember Mr. Wild Bull is in there. Maybe he’ll give us a job on a sign up on top of a building in New York. I’d like to be an electric sign, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d rather be a sign of spring,” Westy said.

“You’ll be pushed over backwards if you crack another one like that,” I told him.

“Look at Pee-wee,” Dorry said.

I had to laugh at the kid. There he sat right in the middle, straight upright, with his hand up making the full scout salute as the train came along. He looked like a little radiator ornament for an automobile. I guess he felt very proud being part of an ad.

As the train went past all the passengers looked out of the windows, laughing. The more they laughed the straighter Pee-wee sat. All of a sudden, good night, over he went backwards, kerflop, into the marshy land just underneath the sign. All the people in the train howled.

He came up the ladder, with mud and grass all over him, just in time for the people in the last two cars to get a look at him. They just screamed. They even came out on the back platform of the last car, cheering him and laughing at him.

“I—I bet I sold as many as a hundred hats doing that,” he said.

I said, “Good night, was that a part of the ad? You look more like an ad for bathing suits than for hats.”

He climbed back into his place pulling the wet grass from his face and clothes.

“That’s the time you weren’t on top,” I said. “I hope Mr. Wild Bull didn’t see you.”

“Here comes a man across the field,” Dorry said.

I looked around behind me and saw a man with a great big straw hat and a shirt like a checker-board coming across the field. It seemed as if he was all shirt and hat and suspenders.

“I think there’s going to be something doing,” Westy said. “I can feel it in the air.”

“Thank goodness, we’re on top,” I said.

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