l take everything there is to eat in the pantry. My
brave army must be fed."

Pee-wee said, "I'm--I'm not so hungry." Gee whiz, it was the first time
I ever heard him admit that.

She said, "If there is any bird seed in this house you shall have it.
Sit down."

Pee-wee sat down on the edge of a chair, looking all around, good and
scared. Every time a door creaked he gave a start. He said, "It's--it's
in--it says in the scout handbook that we have no right to trespass----"

She waved the belt-axe and she said, "The scout handbook! _Ho, ho!_ A
mere scrap of paper." She was awful funny.

Pee-wee said, "We didn't mean to stay here. All we wanted was to go
through----"

"Do you eat pie?" she said.

He said, "Yes, but--maybe we'd better start."

We were all sitting around the dining room. I guess all of us felt kind
of shaky. I thought every minute that Pee-wee was going to get up and
run.

All of a sudden Westy (gee, he's a fiend for noticing things)--he said,
"Dora Dane Daring, the boy scouts have to hand it to you; you've done a
good turn, that's sure. This house looked like a hard proposition. All
we have to do now is climb over that fence in back. We all admit you're
a heroine. But there's one thing I'd like to ask you. Do you notice that
big silver cup on the sideboard has D D D engraved on it? Maybe scouts
aren't so much as warriors but they're observant. I was wondering if you
know whose initials those are?"

At that all the girls started laughing.

"_It's your own house!_" Pee-wee shouted. "Now you see how scouts are
observant. What did I tell you?"

She said, "It is not my own house; so there, Mr. Canary Bird Harris."

"Whose house is it?" Westy said.

"It's my father's, Mr. Smarty," she said.

"No sooner said than stung," I told Westy.

Hunt said, "What difference does it make whose house it is as long as we
go through it? We have to give you the credit anyway."

"Is your father home?" Warde asked her.

She said, "Nobody's home but myself--and the butler."

I said, "Yes, I seem to remember him. I think Pee-wee met him once."

"I--I found out that I'm--kind of--that I'm hungrier than I thought I
was," the kid said.

"Oh, sure," I said; "his appetite is like a cat, it always comes back."

And believe me, that was the only time in the life of P. Harris that I
ever knew him to lose his appetite. Even then it was only for four
minutes. Westy said it was three minutes and a half, but what's th