AN INTERMISSION
It was nice sitting there under a big tree kind of all jollying each
other and eating fish-balls. We decided that as long as we were so
comfortable we would forget about our left-handed resolution for a
little while and then go back down to the lake and row to the outlet and
take the first road to the left.
“That’s the only sensible thing to do,” Marjorie said.
“That’s what makes me think we shouldn’t do it,” I told her; “we made a
resolution to do everything wrong.”
Stella Wingate said. “Well, then, as long as you’re not supposed to be
sitting here eating fish-balls you might as well do it.”
“Sure, that’s logic,” Pee-wee said. “We can give the fish-balls a broad
interpretation, can’t we? We can construe—what d’you call it—treat them
freely.”
“Oh, most conclusively,” I said.
“Treat them as freely as you like,” Marjorie laughed.
Those girls had a lot of eats in a basket. They had crinkly paper
napkins and everything. They had some sewing with them, kind of khaki
colored stuff, I don’t know what it was. They had a couple of books,
too, that they were going to read in the afternoon. Gee whiz, they were
awful nice, those girls. Stella Wingate kept making fish-balls in a nice
little frying-pan with a wooden handle.
The basket was packed all nice like a trunk. Everything in it had
crinkly paper wrapped around it, bottles and everything. Even there were
little pinches of salt twisted in crinkly paper. There were hard-boiled
eggs in crinkly paper too. Gee whiz, everything was wrapped up just like
things around a Christmas tree. Girls are awful funny the way they do
things.
Warde said, “Left-handed hikes are all right.”
“And we’re going to have dessert,” Marjorie said. “Stella knows how to
make fish-balls, but jelly rolls are _my_ masterpiece.”
I said, “I think we’d like several pieces of masterpieces.”
She said, “Oh, they don’t come in pieces, they come in rolls. I’ll show
you how I make them.”
“We’ll show you how to eat them,” Pee-wee said.
I said, “You must excuse our young hero, he was born during a famine. He
likes thunder because it reminds him of rolls. He likes ice because it
comes in cakes. He wants to live in Greenpoint because he thinks it’s
the end of a pickle.”
“How do you make these jelly rolls?” Warde asked her.
She said, “Oh, you’ll see. They’re made of pie crust; they look like ice
cream cones only they’re filled with jam instead.”
“Yum, yum,” I said.
“How many are you going to make?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
She said, “As many as you can eat.”
I said, “Thou knowest not what thou sayest, girl.”
She said, “We’ve got a whole big bag of flour and two cans of jam, and
we’re going to make _oceans_ of them.”
“Atlantic or Pacific oceans?” Pee-wee piped up.
She said, “After lunch we always make a big boxful of them, just heaping
over, and then we just lie back and rest and read aloud and _gorge_
ourselves. We do that every Saturday. We come out in the woods and have
a perfectly _scrumptious_ time. And we don’t go home till the jelly
cones are all gone.”
Brent said, “We’d even be willing to listen to you read if you’ll let us
in on that.”
Stella Wingate said, “You’re perfectly horrid.”
Brent asked them, “Are you reading the Dolly Dimple Series?”
Marjorie said, “No, we’re not reading the Dolly Dimple Series, Mr.
Freshy. We’re reading _Treasure Island_, _so there_.”
“Jelly cones don’t go with _Treasure Island_,” I said.
“Oh, yes, they do, you’ll see them go,” Stella said.
“She’s right,” Pee-wee shouted; “because the more excited you get the
faster you eat. _Treasure Island_ is better than Dolly Dimple for eating
those things—jelly cones. And anyway scouts have to be loyal and we’ll
stick to you till they’re all gone and besides that I’ve read _Treasure
Island_ so I don’t have to listen if I don’t want to, I can just eat.
Gee, I want to see you start making them because if they’re kind of
disguised as ice cream cones I bet they’re good.”
“Listen to starving Russia,” I said. “He’s so dumb he thinks Cook’s
Tours are named after a chef.”