athered around close
to decide what we had better do next. There was quite a wide lawn in
front of the house.

I said to my official staff, "Turn the standard around so the man can
read it and notice if he smiles."

"He's too far away," Dorry said. "Why don't you send some one to
reconnoiter and see if he smiles?"

"Send a spy," the kid whispered.

I said, "Don't tell your general what to do. You're appointed an envoy
to go up to that porch and ask that man if it will be all right for
Leader Blakeley of the Silver Fox Patrol B. S. A. to come up there and
discuss whether we can cross his territory. Tell him if he wants to come
down here and discuss it on neutral territory, you'll give him safe
conduct. Do you know what that is? Take all your stuff with you and
notice if he smiles. Go ahead and do just what I told you."

Honest, you'd have laughed if you could have seen that kid hiking up the
walk across the lawn, rattling and jangling and hoisting his phonograph
horn up on his shoulder. He tramped right up onto the porch and pretty
soon I thought the man was kind of smiling.

Then, all of a sudden, _good night_, the kid raised his big megaphone up
to his mouth to call through it and out fell the coffee-pot and the
saucepan and his pair of sneakers and a lot of other stuff. I could see
the big fat man just shaking.

[Illustration: AS PEE-WEE RAISED HIS MEGAPHONE OUT FELL THE COFFEE POT
AND OTHER STUFF. (Page 32)]

"It's all right, come ahead!" the kid called through the megaphone.

When we came to the porch the man looked us over very funny, like. He
didn't laugh, but I think he was having a hard job not to. Then I knew
we'd win because I could see he was losing his morale.

He said, "Well, what's all this?"

I said, "This is the Silver Fox Patrol, First Bridgeboro Troop, Boy
Scouts of America, and I'm their leader and we're on a bee-line hike and
we can only go straight west."

He said, "And who are all those youngsters out on the sidewalk?"

I said, "They're just following us, they don't count."

He said, "Oh."

Then Pee-wee said, "I'll tell you about the scouts. When they start out
to do a thing, they do it. See? Nothing can stop them. Maybe you know
how a--a--cannon-ball goes----"

The man said, "I can imagine."

"You know what irresistible is?" the kid asked him. "Well, that's what
we are."

The man said, "Oh, I see."

"Sure," Pee-wee said; "things that are hard, that's what we like."

"We