wee
devoured first the one and then the other. Both were delicious, the
letter particularly. It had one advantage over the banana, for he could
only devour the banana once, whereas he devoured the contents of the
letter several times. He wished that bananas and doughnuts were like
letters.

CHAPTER III

AN INVITATION

The envelope was postmarked Everdoze which, with its one thousand two
hundred and fifty--seven inhabitants, was the cosmopolitan center of
Long Valley which ran ( if anything in that neighborhood could be said
to run) from Baxter City down below the vicinity of the bridge on the
highway. That is, Long Valley bordered the highway on its western side
for a distance of about ten miles. The valley was, roughly speaking, a
couple of miles wide, very deep in places, and thickly wooded. It
was altogether a very sequestered and romantic region. Through it,
paralleling the highway, was a road, consisting mostly of two wagon ruts
with a strip of grass and weeds between them. To traverse Long Valley
one turned into this road where it left the highway at Baxters, and in
the course of time the wayfarer would emerge out of this dim tract into
the light of day where the unfrequented road came into the highway again
below the bridge.

About midway of this lonely road was Everdoze, and in a pleasant
old-fashioned white house in Everdoze lived Ebenezer Quig who once upon
a time had married Pee-wee's Aunt Jamsiah. Pee-wee remembered his Aunt
Jamsiah when she had come to make a visit in Bridgeboro and, though
he had never seen her since, he had always borne her tenderly in mind
because as a little (a very little) boy her name had always reminded him
of jam. The letter, as has been said, bore the postmark of Everdoze
and had been stamped by the very hand of Simeon Drowser, the local
postmaster.

This is what the letter said:

DEAR WALTER:

Your uncle has been pestering me to write to you
but Pepsy has been using the pen for her school
exercise and I couldn't get hold of it till today
when she went away with Wiggle, perch fishing.
Licorice Stick says they're running in the brook
most wonderful but you can't believe half what he
says. Seems as if the perch know when school closes,
least ways that's what your uncle says.

Pee-wee reread these enchanting words. Pepsy! Wiggle! Perch fishing!
Licorice