UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
Then we all marched in, just as if nothing had happened--you know, kind
of careless like.
Westy said, "Good morning, it's a beautiful afternoon this evening. Is
dinner ready?"
The girls just couldn't speak, they were laughing so hard. Two of them
were trying to pluck the feathers out of a couple of chickens, and by
that I knew the worst hadn't happened. But they weren't paying much
attention to their work; they were just bending backward and forward and
screaming.
"L--l--look at him!" Grace Bentley just blurted out; "it's too
_excruciating_!"
I said, "Pee-wee, don't ever quote the handbook to me again. '_A scout
is kind._' You have deliberately murdered that poor omelet. Don't ever
say you don't believe in frightfulness."
"You make me tired!" he yelled. "Didn't you tell me the way
to flip--flop--didn't you say to catch--didn't you say to
toss--graceful----"
"I said to toss it up gracefully," I told him, "and to let it turn over
in the air and then to catch it _inside_ the pan. But tell me this,
_please_, so I can die in peace; what are you doing with the curling
iron?"
"He was going to open--he was going to open--a--a--can," the girl they
called Billie said, all the while trying not to laugh; "oh, dear me!"
"He wanted us to cut the chicken up to fr--fr--fr--fr--_fry_!" Grace
Bentley screamed.
"Oh, he's a regular cut-up," Connie told her.
"He sm--sm--_ashed_ the potatoes so they--oh, just look at them!" one of
the others managed to blurt out.
The kettle full of mashed potatoes looked as if a bomb had fallen into
it; there were gobs of mashed potatoes all around on the trees and
ground for about ten feet. It looked like a snowstorm.
"He flavored the onions with mosquito dope--cit--citronella," Pug Peters
shrieked.
"Sure," Wig said; "a scout is resourceful."
"You all make me tired!" Pee-wee yelled; "how can you flip when you
trip----"
"Walter," I said, very gentle and kind like, "take off your apron and
ask for an armistice. It's your only hope; unconditional surrender.
Here, give me the frying pan; look at the grease all down your leg,
you're a sight."
I began gathering up the gobs of omelet from his head and his shoulders,
while the girls sat on the ground all around and just laughed and
laughed. Honest, I thought Pug Peters would have a fit, she laughed so
hard. Grace Bentley nearly had hysterics.
"How can you--tell me this----?" Pee-wee yelled; "how can you
trip--flip--if you flop--I mean trip--you make me sick. That could
happen----"
"Sure, it could happen to Edison," I said; "you should worry. Get your
apron off and your face washed before some of us die."
Poor kid, he was a wreck. We washed him up and brushed and cleaned his
suit the best we could and collected all the odds and ends of omelet.
Westy wanted to try to fit them together like a picture puzzle. That
omelet looked like the map of Europe after the war. But one thing, the
chickens were saved. In another ten minutes, I suppose, odds and ends
of chicken would have been flying in the air.
Pug Peters said she was sorry, because she had been wanting to eat some
of that omelet to see how it tasted. She said it had maple syrup in it.
_Good night!_ Grace Bentley told us there was peppermint extract in it,
too. Anyway, it had an awful death.
From all we heard, about the only thing Pee-wee didn't use for flavoring
was fountain pen ink. There was a bottle of glue there and I don't know
how he happened to miss that. The mashed potatoes were flavored with
strawberry, but they weren't so bad. The onions had a funny taste, too;
kind of like pineapple. He had made some fried muffins, the same way
that I usually did, and Westy and Connie and I had a good game of one
o'cat with one of them. Westy knocked a home run and even that didn't
break it.
As soon as the girls could manage to talk straight, they got busy
plucking the chickens and we cut them up and fried them. Pee-wee retired
from his strenuous career of cook and just sat by and watched us. He
didn't say much. A scout knows when to keep still.
Maybe you think we didn't have a good dinner, but mm-_mmm_, that
chicken was good. We boiled some more onions and added them to the
others, so the pineapple flavoring wasn't so strong, and I flopped some
flapjacks. I can make a flapjack do three summersaults and catch it. We
ate the muffins, too, even though they were hard, because scouts are
supposed not to be scared of things that are hard. They tasted sweet
kind of, like marshmallows, and we decided that Scout Harris had used
powdered sugar by mistake, instead of flour. Anyway, he said powdered
sugar and flour looked alike. Especially we thought that was what he had
done, because the sugar can had flour in it, and we put flour in our
coffee. But anyway, it wasn't coffee. It was Indian meal. We should
worry.
The girls were awful nice and I guess they were glad of everything that
happened, because it made so much fun. Pee-wee didn't lose his pull with
them, anyway, that was sure. They said he was _just simply
excruciating_. Pug Peters said that anyway, the principal thing was for
a scout to know how to eat, and Pee-wee didn't fall down there, you can
bet.
A scout is hungry.