ne oar. The boat went
swirling around in circles.

"That's what they call the waltz stroke, I guess," Connie said; "they'd
get along better if they had some dreamy music."

Westy gave me a sly wink and said, "If you can't do a thing, do it
anyway."

Pee-wee stood on the shore with a scowl on his face watching them. The
girls were Grace Bentley and another one they called Pug Peters. They
have awful funny nicknames for each other, girls do. They flopped
against shore about fifty feet from where they intended to land, and
they giggled as if they thought it was a lot of fun.

"This boat reminds me of a balky horse," Pug Peters said.

"It reminds me of a pin wheel," I told her.

"Oh, you needn't talk," she said; "you started to go about five miles
south and you landed eighty miles west--in your old car."

"Scouts aren't afraid of long distances," I told her; "they don't bother
with little five-mile runs."

"Is he ready?" Grace Bentley asked.

"A scout is always ready," Westy told her; "that's his middle name."

"And we're not going to let him row, either," Pug Peters said.

"Aren't you afraid he'll get dizzy?" I said. "Remember his little head
is full of recipes; two heaping teaspoonfuls to a half cup of milk----"

"Never you mind, Walter," she called to Pee-wee (because that's his real
name), "you just get right in."

Oh, boy! Laugh! I just sat down on the bank and began to roar. Pee-wee
didn't care anything about rowing. He didn't care about anything, I
guess. He was in a state of cromo, or whatever you call it. He just got
in and sat down in the stern seat as if he was going to be executed.

"Aren't you going to show them how to row?" Connie called out, as the
girls stood up in the boat, each with an oar, trying to push off.

But Pee-wee wasn't going to show them anything.

"We'll show _him_ we can do something," they said.

Pretty soon they got off and the last we saw of Pee-wee he was sitting
like a nice little boy scout in the stern of the boat. Every time the
boat swerved around in a circle, we could see his face, all sober and
scowling. The boat went every which way, one girl giving a long pull and
the other breaking her stroke and almost losing her oar. But what cared
they, yo, ho? Sometimes the boat seemed to be coming back to us, and
then we could see Scout Harris sitting there with his knees together,
looking fierce and terrible, like Billikins with a grouch. The rowing
wasn't much of a joke