“That’s a good argument,” I told him. “I’m thinking about lunch-time more than I’m thinking about arguments,” Pee-wee said. “What are we going to do at twelve o’clock?” “We’ll eat our own words,” Sandy said, “and go any way we want to.” “Sure, a couple of solemn vows will make a nice lunch,” I said. “What do we care where we go? The wind is the quitter, not us, I should worry.” I said, “We’ll stay here till twelve o’clock and if the breeze doesn’t spring up by that time, we’ll go to the next village willynilly, that means any way no matter what. Then, we’ll buy some eats.” “If we had brought some with us like I wanted to do, we could eat them now,” Pee-wee said. “That’s what we get for starting out not prepared like Scouts are supposed not ever to do--now you see what we get.” “I don’t see it,” Dub said. “You mean what we don’t get,” I said. “Where do you suppose that breeze went anyway? I’d just like to know where it went.” “Maybe it went crazy like you,” Pee-wee shouted. “I never thought of that,” I told him. Jiminies, we were all sprawling on the grass talking a lot of nonsense and kidding Pee-wee and taking each other’s hats off and pulling up grass and throwing it in each other’s faces--a lot we cared about hiking. “Now you see how it is,” the Kid said to Dub and Sandy. “Do you blame the Scouts over at camp that they won’t go on hikes with him--gee whiz, they all had a taste of it. We always get stalled like this and just sit around fooling and don’t do anything and he calls it a hike. Even he’ll write all about it and a publisher will print it to show how crazy he is and he’ll expect fellers to buy those books where he tells a lot of crazy nonsense. This is the first summer you fellers ever saw him, but he’s like this all the time, you ask Westy Martin in his own patrol. He’s the only one of them that’s got any sense.” I said, “Scout Harris, you will cease talking about my old college chump, Westy Martin. I won’t hear another word against him. He can’t help it if he has some sense--he’s more to be pitied than blamed. I won’t hear a word against him--not even a punctuation mark. Anyway, what’s the use of having sense? That’s one law I have no use for, the law of gravity.” Dub said, “Let’s tell riddles.” “Sure,” I said, “that’s a good idea. Now the hike is really started. Why doesn’t Santa Claus wear a scout suit? Give me any answer, I don’t care what, and I’ll give you the question to it.” “Why doesn’t Santa Claus wear a scout suit?” the kid shouted. “Because there isn’t any Santa Claus,” I told him. “No sooner said than stung. Open your mouth and I’ll shoot this grasshopper in it.” By that time, Dub and Sandy were lying on their backs kicking their legs and laughing so hard they couldn’t speak. After a while, Dub said, “Here’s an answer, and you give me the question to it.” “Absotively, posolutely,” I told him. He said, “The answer is _yes_.”