he roof for us."

Dorry said, "I guess if Warde Hollister saw us now he'd say we're up
against a real adventure."

"All he wants is to be a movie actor," Pee-wee said. "That's what he
told me. He said scouts were just kids. I bet he'd have to admit that
this is a dark mystery, all right."

Dorry said, "I know that man's name all right, it's Copley. Often I see
him at the station."

"I knew he had something to do with cops," Hunt said. "I wonder how soon
we'll know what's up his sleeve."

"I wonder how soon he'll pass the cake," Pee-wee said.

Anyway we didn't have to wait long for the refreshments. Mrs. Copley
came out and passed around cake and cookies and things and she was nice
and friendly. And while we were sprawling around on the porch eating, a
man came around with a couple of ladders.

Mrs. Copley said, "I'll just lay this plate of cookies on the table and
you boys can help yourselves while you're waiting for Mr. Copley to come
out." Then she put the plate on a little wicker table over near the end
of the porch. After that she went in the house.

Pee-wee said, "Those cookies are good, I'm going to have a couple more."

"Don't go over to the end of the porch," I told him. "We have to stay
right here in front of the door; this is where the bee-line is."

"The bee-line can have a branch to it while we're waiting," the kid
said. "Maybe the bee-line might be wider than you think--maybe."

"The bee-line runs just this side of those cookies," I said.

"You're a fine kind of a leader," he said, "to let her stand that plate
over there. Is that what you call tactics?"

I said, "Why didn't you take a half dozen cookies when she passed them
around the same as the rest of us did? You only took one."

"You don't call that tactics, do you?" Westy asked him.

"I've got some manners," the kid said.

I said, "Well, you haven't got any cookies. Look here." Then I showed
him about a half a dozen. Oh, boy, they were nice and brown and crisp
and they had nuts in them. The fellows all had about as many as a dozen
cookies each, because Mrs. Copley had said, "Oh, _do_ take more, I'm
_sure_ you're a hungry lot of scouts."

Pee-wee sat there on one of the steps watching us eat cookies. Every
time he moved I said, "You stay right where you are. Remember, this is a
_bee-line hike_."

Westy said, "These cookies are mighty good."

I said, "_M--mmm_, that's what they are."

Hunt said, "They're about the best I ever tast