But anyway, I knew that they hadn’t received any word about me from
anybody, and I was all up in the air about that. I could see that Jake
Holden hadn’t been there at all and that nobody had come and told them
about the signal, either. I didn’t exactly ask them, but I could tell it
all the same. So I told them all about everything that happened, about
how I got caught in the marsh and all that, and especially about Wig
being such a hero. Then she cried a little, kind of, and I said there
was no use crying because I was home all right. But anyway, she cried
just the same, and hugged me awful tight just as if everything hadn’t
ended all right. That’s a funny thing about mothers.
So then I went to bed and I lay awake thinking about everything that
happened. What I thought about most was why Jake Holden hadn’t come and
told my mother and father like I heard him say he was going to do. You
remember how I heard him say that. So that was a mystery—that’s what
Pee-wee would call it. And I was wondering why he hadn’t come to the
house to give them that note he had found. Because I knew Jake Holden
(he always called me “Scouty”) and he liked me, too, and I knew he would
sure have come to the house if something hadn’t happened.
Now that I was all calmed down, as you might say, I wasn’t surprised any
more about no one reading the signal, because maybe it didn’t show very
plain in Bridgeboro and anyway, most grown people seem to think that
signalling and all that kind of thing are lots of fun for scouts, but
not much use except when grown people, and especially the navy, do it.
Anyway, I should worry about grown people, because we have plenty of
fun.
Oh, boy, didn’t I sleep that night! When I got up I made up my mind that
I’d go to Jake Holden’s shanty, just for the fun of it, and find out why
he didn’t come and tell my family that I was dead. Because, if I was
dead, he sure ought to have come and told them. Of course, I knew I
_wasn’t_ dead, but anyway, how did he know that?
After breakfast I did my good turn—I turned my sister Ruth’s bed around
for her so as it faced the bay window. I was going to turn it twice and
call it two good turns, but she said that wouldn’t be fair—that that
wouldn’t be two good turns. I said it would be just as fair as Pee-wee
turning the ice-cream freezer till the cream was all frozen and then
saying he did a hundred good turns. Then she threw a tennis ball at me,
but it missed me. That’s one thing about girls, they can’t throw a ball.
They can’t whistle, either.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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