nt of Pee-wee with wagging tail and questioning
gaze. He seemed to say, "I'm ready for anything, the sky is the limit."

"You haven't had a bite to eat since breakfast and you're starving. I
can tell it," said Aunt Jamsiah. "You come right in the kitchen."

"I had a lot of frankfurters and things at the places along the
highway," Pee-wee said. "I had waffles at one place. I bet they make a
lot of money along that road selling things. There are shacks all the
way. All the autoists stop and buy things to eat. You can get tires and
everything."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to eat tires," said Pepsy.

"You think you're smart, don't you?" Pee-wee said.

"What are your soldier clothes for?" the girl wanted to know.

"They're not soldier clothes," Pee-wee said;

"I'm a scout."

"I bet you don't know as much as Miss Bellson does."

"I bet I don't either," Pee-wee said, "so I win."

"She's the school teacher here and she knows everything."

"Did she know I was coming?"

"No she didn't and--"

"Then she doesn't know everything," Pee-wee said.

"Smarty, smarty!" the girl retorted, "I came out of an orphan home and
that's more than you can say.".

"You only get one helping of dessert there," said Pee-wee. "I'd rather
be a scout than an orphan. I know a feller who was an orphan and he was
sorry for it afterwards."

"Are you going to stay all summer?"

"Till school opens," Pee-wee said.

"Do you want me to show you where there's a woodchuck hole?"

At this point Pee-wee was summoned again to the kitchen where he ate a
sumptuous repast, after which Pepsy and Wiggle took him about and showed
him the farm.

Pee-wee and Pepsy fenced a good deal but seemed to progress in this
cautious and defensive way toward a friendly understanding. As for
Wiggle, he danced about, following elusive scents that led nowhere,
carried off and back again by quick impulse, till at last the three
ended their tour of inspection at a little summer house which had been
built over a spring by the roadside.

Here they drank of the bubbling, crystal water. Wiggle doing this as
everything else, with erratic impulse, drinking a dozen times and not
much at any time.

The dying sunlight painted the slopes of the valley with crimson tints
and the countryside was very still. Through the woods to the west could
be heard occasionally the discordant noise from the loose flooring of
the bridge on the highway as an auto sped over it. In the quiet evening