car rolled away:
"It's a shame to tease him; he's just too cute for anything. I could
just kiss him. But it was so excruciatingly funny."

CHAPTER XVI

A REVELATION

"What are you laughing at?" Pee-wee demanded to know, as soon as he had
regained his poise and dignity. "You're as bad as they are."

"I couldn't help laughing," Pepsy said remorsefully, "'specially when
you fell down. You said you were going to handle them."

"That could happen to the smartest man," Pee-wee said in scornful
reproval; "that could happen to--to--to Julius Caesar."

"He's dead, you ask Miss Bellison," said Pepsy timidly.

"That shows how much you know," said Pee-wee scornfully as he brushed
off his clothing.

"Can't something be a kind of a thing that could happen to somebody
who's dead if he was very smart, only if he wasn't dead. We got a dollar
and ten cents from them, didn't we?"

"Yes, but--did you--did you--handle them?" Pepsy asked fearfully.

"There are different ways of handling people," Pee-wee said; "you can't
handle people that are crazy, can you? I can handle scoutmasters even."

Pepsy was willing to believe anything of her hero and she said, "They
were a lot of freshies and I hate them anyway."

Pee-wee did not trouble himself about what the man had said. His chief
interest was the dollar and ten cents of working capital which they now
had and how to invest it. In his enthusiasm he had been rather premature
in his advertisement of auto accessories, and he now purposed to make
good at least one of these announcements by commissioning Simeon Drowser
to buy some ten-cent rolls of tire tape for him at Baxter City, whither
Simeon went daily.

He started along the road to the post office where he hoped to catch
Simeon before that worthy left for Baxter City. But he did not reach the
post office. The first interruption to his progress was one of his own
two-card signs staring him in the face from a roadside tree:

CHEWING GUM
FOR PUNCTURES

He paused scowling before this novel announcement.

His gaze then wandered to a fence on which he read the astounding words:

PANCAKES FOR
HEADLIGHTS

Alas, the ground glass which should have appeared in place of pancakes
did duty beneath the single word EAT on another tree nearby. Eat GROUND
GLASS the hungry motorist was blithely advise