Yes, that was enough, more than he had ever expected. It was like the scene he had "pretended" out in the little barn when he had presented himself with the fancied signalling badge.

Stealthily his hand moved to his ticking shirt and removed the campaign b.u.t.ton. For there before him was a boy with a real, a _real_, signalling badge. His eyes were riveted upon that badge; he could not take them from it. Suppose someone should ask him about the b.u.t.ton; why he was wearing it now that Harding and Coolidge were in office? He would blush, he could not tell them.

He hoped that they would not notice him for he knew he could not talk to them, that his voice would shake and that he would go to pieces. Now that he saw them, joyous, uproarious, bantering, wearing badges on their sleeves, he realized that what _he_ had done was nothing at all. He heard Scoutmaster Ned humorously belittling the exploits of his own heroes. No, Peter Piper would not step rashly into that bantering throng with that one exploit of his own.

So he stood in the bay window, half concealed by the old-fashioned melodeon, and watched them. Just gazed at them....

And when they all crowded out he lingered behind and whispered to the music-master of the milk cans, "Don't tell them, Ham; please don't tell them anything--about me."

And so the party made their way along the dark road and Peter followed and heard the flattering comments and fraternal plans involving the little hero from Bridgeboro. Evidently they were going to keep Scout Harris with them and have him patented, from what Peter overheard.

When they came to Peter's little home, Scoutmaster Ned discovered and spoke to him while Pee-wee was making an enthusiastic p.r.o.nouncement about Jim Burton's Packard car.

"You live here, sonny?"

"Y--yes, sir," stammered Peter, quite taken aback.

"Well, now, I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to roll this stalled car a little way into your yard to get it off the road. All right?"

"Y--yes, sir."

"Then we're going on to where that little fellow lives. I have to see his folks and he has to get some scout duds and junk and stuff and then we're coming back. We ought to be here early in the morning."

"Y--yes, sir."

"You just keep your eye out for that car, will you? It has a way of disappearing."

"Y--yes, sir."

"I don't mean to watch it all the time, but just sort of have an eye out. I'm taking this little jigger out of the distributer, so no one could run the old bus anyway. But you just have an eye out, will you?"

"Y--yes, sir," said Peter anxiously.

"That's the boy, and some fine day you'll have a couple of autos of your own to worry about."

Peter smiled bashfully, happily. That was a wonderful joke. And a real scoutmaster, just like the pictures, had said it to _him_. He thought that, with the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, Scoutmaster Ned was the most wonderful scout that ever lived. He wondered how it would seem to know him all the time. Peter had no idea what a distributer was, but he knew now that _his_ method of crippling an automobile was very crude. He was glad they did not know so they could not laugh at him....

After the Packard car, with its noisy load, had started for that fairy region where they had movie shows and things and where Scout Harris lived, Peter was beset by an awful problem. He was not sleepy, he would not be sleepy for at least a year after what he had seen, and he intended to watch the car as it should be watched. The question that puzzled him was whether he dared get into it or whether he had better sit on the old carriage step. He finally compromised by sitting on the running board. And there he sat till the owl stopped shrieking and the first pale herald of the dawn appeared in the sky.

And when the sun peaked over the top of Graveyard Hill and painted the tombstones below with its fresh new light and showed the gray frost of the autumn morning spread over the lonesome, bleak fields, and finally cast its cheery light upon the tiny, isolated home, it found Peter Piper, pioneer scout, of Piper's Crossroads, seated there upon the running board of Scoutmaster Ned's car, waiting for one more glimpse of those heroes....

CHAPTER x.x.xII

ON TO BRIDGEBORO

Scoutmaster Ned Garrison had a middle name. Handling parents, that was his middle name. He was a bear at that. He could make them eat out of his hand. Had he not engineered the camping enterprise pending the preparation of a makeshift school? Parents did not trouble him, he ate them alive.

"You leave them to me," he said to Pee-wee as they advanced against poor defenseless Bridgeboro. "They'll either consent or we'll shoot up the town, hey, Safety First? We're on the rampage to-night; somebody's been feeding us meat."

It was not Pee-wee's custom to leave a thing to somebody else. He attended to everything--meals, awards, hikes, ice cream cones, camping localities, duffel lists, parents, everything. He was the world's champion fixer. You can see for yourselves what a triumph he made of not rescuing the wrong car. That was merely a detail. If the car had been the right one and no one had stopped him from rescuing it he would have rescued it. Since everything worked out all right, he was triumphant.

And he was better than glue for fixing things.

"I'll handle them," he said.

"Well, well both handle them," said Scoutmaster Ned.

A little farther along the road Safety First said, "I don't see why the road was closed off. It seems to me to be all right."

Pee-wee was now sufficiently subdued to think and speak calmly, and he said, "That feller with the shirt put it there; he said he read the signal. I guess he's crazy, hey?"

"Oh, the fellow with the shirt?" queried Fido Norton, humorously.

"I seem to remember a shirt," said Nick.

"That was it," Pee-wee said.

"He was just a little rube," said Charlie Norris.

"He's the one that said I was a thief," said Pee-wee. "I told him I could prove I was a scout by eating a potato a certain way."

"And be didn't take you up?" said Scoutmaster Ned.

"He didn't have a potato," Pee-wee said.

"It's best always to carry potatoes with you," said Scoutmaster Safety First.

"After this I'm always going to carry five or six," said Pee-wee.

"The proof of the potatoes is in the eating," said Nick.

"I know nine different ways to cook them," said Pee-wee; "and I can eat them raw so that makes ten. I can eat potato skins too, so that makes eleven."

"If you could eat potato-bugs that would make twelve," said Charlie Norris.

"If you eat lightning bugs, that will make you bright," said Pee-wee; "that's what Roy Blakeley says; he's in my troop. He's crazy and he says he's glad of it. We've got three patrols in my troop and I'm a member of the Ravens but I'm kind of in all of them. I know all about camping and everything. In the fall you're supposed to camp east of a hill, do you know why?"

"No, break it to us gently," said Nick.

"When you said _break it_, that reminded me that I can break an apple into halves with one hand."

"Do tell," said Charlie; "what do you do with the other half?"

"What other half?"