PEE-WEE TRIUMPHANT
It was toward the close of a beautiful summer afternoon that a trim
Racine cruiser poked her nose around the boat club’s anchorage near Nyack
on the Hudson, and brought up alongside one of the commercial wharves,
which made an inharmonious background to the spotless white hull and
shining mahogany cabin. She made no more noise than a canoe. The first
rays of the declining sun fell upon her knife-like brass bow and
reflected from her shining metal parts. As she touched the dock several
scouts scrambled from her and made her fast.
“Jimin-_ety_! But she gets over the water!” remarked Connie Bennet. “We’d
have been a couple of days or more coming down in the _Good Turn_.”
“And doesn’t she take the hills fine!” said Roy Blakeley.
“She’s a _regular_ boat,” observed Garry.
“The _Good Turn_ is all right only her bow’s too near the stern,” said
Roy.
“Gee, everything looks the same, doesn’t it,” said Pee-wee, gazing about
him. “This is just where we stood when it began to rain last year. Then
we went up that road and that’s where we found the _Good Turn_.”
“The sun was going down just as it is now,” said Tom, climbing out over
the combing. “I remember those hills over there looked just like they do
now.”
“Sure, even the water’s wet, just the same as it was then. Don’t you
remember how I spoke about the water being so wet?”
“This is just like a book,” said Pee-wee. “Gee, I never thought it would
happen this way; I saw a movie play once where a feller—a long lost
brother—came home, and oh, cracky, they fell all over him. They thought
he was dead and his mother she was looking at his picture and crying—I
mean weeping—when all of a sudden——”
“All of a sudden Pee-wee Harris will be left behind if he doesn’t get a
hustle,” said Roy. “Come on, wash up and get your hair fixed if you
expect to make that speech.”
“Do you know how I’m going to begin?”
“I know how you’re going to end, if you don’t get a hustle.”
The whole Bridgeboro troop with Garry and Raymond and Harry Stanton, had
come down from Catskill Landing. Their stay at Temple Camp was ended and
they had said good-bye to Harry Arnold and his young friend, whom they
hoped to meet again next summer. Little they dreamed of the strange
circumstances under which that meeting was to occur. They had left the
_Good Turn_ up the river for they hoped to cruise northward again in the
larger boat.
In the cool of the evening the three scouts who had trod this same road a
year before, accompanied by the boy who had trod it many times himself in
days gone by, made their way through the beautiful hilly country for West
Nyack. And, indeed, their errand seemed, as Pee-wee had suggested, like a
chapter out of a book.
Garry had positively refused to go with them.
“It was you fellows that she gave the boat to and it’s for you to pay her
back,” he had said.
“Do you remember how old—how Mr. Stanton laughed when I talked to him?”
said Pee-wee as they tramped along the familiar road. “You can’t deny
that I put it into his head to give us the boat. And I bet if I ask him
to let Harry go on a cruise now, he’ll do it. You leave it to me—I know
how to handle him.”
“All right, kiddo, we’ll leave it to you,” laughed Roy, “but I’ve got a
sneaking idea that when they once get their fists on our long lost son
and brother it’ll take a crow-bar to pry him loose again.”
“You leave it to me.”
It would be hard to say what Harry Stanton’s feelings were as he walked
homeward with his three companions. He seemed nervous and anxious and
said but little, but every object which met his gaze now was familiar to
him and as he looked about upon the very fields where he had played and
the houses which he knew he seemed to acquire poise and self-possession.
An odd habit which he had shown to Garry and somewhat to the others of
confusing his life at Mr. Waring’s with his old life at home, was fast
disappearing and now each familiar sight seemed to act like a potent
medicine to bring him to himself.
A man who passed them on the road turned and stared at him, then went on,
turning again and again. He spoke to a man who was raking a lawn and who
also stared after him. The boys paid no heed.
At last they reached the house. No one was about, and they took a short
cut across the lawn, right under the big tree where Pee-wee had captured
the fugitive bird. Here was a garden bench and leaving Harry Stanton
seated upon it, they went up on the porch and rang the bell. Pee-wee was
visibly nervous and even Roy showed repressed excitement, but Tom was
stolid as he always was.
There was the calling of a voice within, the faint sound of footsteps on
the stair, and young Ruth Stanton stood on the inner side of the screen
door looking at them. For a moment she stared in amazement and in that
momentary look Tom caught a glint of the same expression that had puzzled
him in Jeffrey Waring in their first encounter on the lonely hill. Then
suddenly her face lighted up with a merry smile of recognition.
“Oh, hello,” she said, opening the door and speaking in great surprise.
“I didn’t know you——”
“You remember us?” laughed Roy.
“I should think I did, but you’re the last persons I ever expected to
see. Isn’t it lovely, your coming again—just as if you had dropped from
the clouds!”
“We’d have been some shower, wouldn’t we?” laughed Roy.
“Oh, I think it’s fine,” she repeated; “and you’ve got to stay to supper.
We’re going to have popovers—do you like popovers? I adore them!”
“We don’t know what they are,” said Roy, “but we like them.”
They sat down in the wicker chairs which formed a little circle on the
deep, shaded porch, the girl swinging her feet back and forth and gazing
from one to the other.
“We’ve been up to camp,” Tom began. “We’re on our way down the river.”
“Oh, isn’t that lovely—I wish I was a boy! How’s the boat?”
“Gee, it _is_ great being a boy,” said Pee-wee. “I—”
“The boat is in the best of health, thank you,” interrupted Roy, fearing
that Pee-wee would say too much; “and one of the reasons we hiked up here
is because we want to pay you back for it. As Pee-wee says, a scout has
to be cautious and he didn’t want us to pay you back till we were sure
the boat was all right.”
“I never said that!” cried Pee-wee, indignantly. “Don’t you believe him,
I never said that!”
“So we’ve been a long time getting around to it,” continued Roy.
“That’s ridiculous,” said the girl. “I thought you just came to _see_
me.”
“So we did,” said Roy.
“And we’re going to tell you our adventures since we saw you,” added
Pee-wee. “We’ve had some dandy ones. One in particular that you’ll like
to hear about,” he added, with an air of mystery.
“When anybody does anything for a scout,” Tom began again in his sober
way, “he has to remember it and do them a good turn. We couldn’t do you
one because we couldn’t think of anything big enough——”
“You see, I’ll tell you how it is,” interrupted Pee-wee, “each good
turn’s got to be better than the other one—they get bigger—kind of,
and——”
“That’s nonsense,” said Ruth. “Then I’d have to do you a bigger one to
pay back and you’d have to—”
“We think we’ve hit on a pretty good one,” said Roy. “Anyway, how’s the
bird?”
“Oh, he’s fine! He can say ‘Good-night’ and ‘Welcome, home’!”
“That’s a good thing to say just now,” Roy said.
“And I’m teaching him to say ‘Down with the Kaiser’! Isn’t that perfectly
terrible! Anyway, I’m not neutral. Are you?”
“Not so you’d notice it,” Roy confessed.
“Would you go to war if we had a war?” she asked impulsively.
“Oh, I guess we’d give old Uncle Samuel a hand.”
“Isn’t that glorious! But suppose you should get killed.”
“We’re not supposing things now,” said Roy. “We’ve got something to tell
you. We came back to bring you a present. When people come across with
boats and things like that we don’t let them get away with it—hey, Tom?
So we’re here with our little come-back. What d’ye say we stroll down on
the lawn? We left our package on that bench out there; and just for the
fun of it we’d like to poke around where Pee-wee pulled his stunt last
summer. Then well go in and hear the parrot say ‘Welcome home’—what d’ye
say?”
“Yes, but you’ve got to stay to supper, so that you can see papa,” Ruth
said. “He laughs whenever he thinks of how you called him Old Man
Stanton. But he isn’t grouchy—only he’ll never be the same since my
brother—died. And besides, you have to tell me your adventures, you
know.”
They went down the steps and crossed the lawn. The girl, running ahead,
seemed not to notice the lone figure on the bench with its back toward
her till she was within a few feet of it. Then she paused in surprise and
as she did so, Harry Stanton rose and turned to face her, the while
grasping the back of the bench nervously....
The several accounts of the three scouts as to what happened then,
differed materially. There was no doubt that Ruth stepped quickly back in
momentary fright, grasping the arm of Pee-wee who happened to be nearest
her. Pee-wee said that her hand was trembling and that she “clutched him
in terror.” Roy maintained that the “clutching in terror business” came
out of a heroic scene from one of Alger’s books. Tom said that for a
moment she seemed about to run, which Pee-wee admitted, claiming that she
thought better of it when she found that he was near. All agreed that she
was first panic-stricken and then greatly agitated as Roy took her hand
and drew her to the bench.
At all events, it was only for a moment or two and then she and her
brother were in each other’s arms. There is no authentic account of what
happened then, for the three visitors, being good scouts, strolled to the
hedge which bordered the lawn and looked at the scenery beyond. It must
have been beautiful scenery and very affecting, for Pee-wee’s eyes were
brimming, and Tom’s and Roy’s were not exactly what you would call
dry....