PAID IN FULL
Pee-wee was just about to make a frantic rush to the house when he saw
another automobile coming along the road, brushing the projecting
foliage aside as some stealthily advancing creature might do. Not far
behind it he could hear other cars grinding along that impossible road
in second gear.
The world seemed to be making a pathway, or rather a highway, to
Pee-wee’s door. The sequestered, overgrown road, with its intertwined
and overarching boughs, was become a surging thoroughfare. The birds,
formally unmolested in their wonted haunts, complained to one another of
this sudden intrusion into their domains.
Away back where this obscure road branched off the highway to furnish
the unfrequented access to Everdoze and Berryville, a sign had been
placed that morning with an arrow pointing toward the depths of the
Everdoze jungle.
DETOUR ⇾
HIGHWAY CLOSED. FOLLOW
YELLOW ARROWS.
These yellow arrows appeared at intervals along the Everdoze road, thus
guiding the motorist back to the highway at a point a mile or two below
the gap where the bridge had been. Everdoze was on the map now in dead
earnest. The little hamlet nestling in its wooded valley was destined to
review such a procession of Pierce-Arrows, and Packards, and Cadillacs,
aye and Fords and jitney busses, as it had never dreamed of in all its
humble career.
Who was responsible for this? Or was accident responsible? Who, if
anyone, by the mere touching of a match had started a blaze which would
illuminate poor little Everdoze? Everdoze had gone to bed (at eight P.
M.) in obscurity. It had awakened to find itself dragged into the light
of day. Already Constable Bungel was devising a formidable code of
“traffic regulations”—traps and snares to catch the prosperous and make
them pay tribute as they passed along.
As early as seven o’clock that vigilant agent of the peace had placed a
sign in front of the post office (where he was wont to loiter) reading,
“NO PARKING HERE.” But all the while he hoped that the unwary would park
there and pay the three dollars and costs.
But of all the signs which appeared in Everdoze on that day when fate,
like an alarm clock, had awakened it out of its slumber, there was one
which thrilled the soul of Pee-wee Harris and caused consternation to
everybody else. This appeared in front of the “Taown Hall” and at a
number of other strategic places in and out of the village.
“Come and read it! _Come and read it!_” shouted little Silas Knapp as he
madly intercepted Pee-wee who, as I have said, was about to run to the
house. “It’s a monolopy or somethin’ like that—Mr. Browser says so! Come
and read it!”
So before going to the house Pee-wee went and read it. He did not know
that the stern phraseology had been penned ever so tenderly and with a
twinkle in the eye of the writer. He did not know that it was a tribute
(or shall we say the repayment of a good turn?) to the little red-headed
girl, who, all unaware of this hubbub, was sleeping in her little
bedroom under the eaves. Strange that such a little girl could thus
shake her fist by proxy at the grasping villagers!
NOTICE
The property on both sides of the road from two miles north of the
Everdoze line to the boundary of Ebenezer Quig’s farm, is of
private ownership.
Any one attempting to sell or vend or who erects any tent or shack
for such purpose upon said property will be prosecuted to the full
extent of the law.
Ira C. Jensen.
So Pepsy had kept her word after all, her one poor little investment of
kindness had paid a hundred percent dividend, and the partners were the
owners of a _monopoly_, or a monolopy, whichever you choose to call it.