o we went inside and looked
at him. I guess the stopping of the car had shaken him up some. His
head was way underneath the seat, one of his arms was halfway up on the
seat and one of his legs was on the movie outfit in the aisle.

It was a sight for a painter. I mean a sign painter.

CHAPTER XXXII

EXPLORING

"What do you say we explore the neighborhood?" Wig said.

"What do you say we put a block in front of the wheels?" I said. "Safety
first."

"This seems to be a kind of a walled city, like China," Connie said. "I
can see a kind of a shadow. Do you suppose that's the fence going all
the way around?"

"Sure it is," I told him; "all we have to do is shut those big gates and
the car will never get away. Only China isn't a city, if anybody should
ask you."

"What's the difference?" he said. "Nobody's likely to ask me."

"This is a very mysterious place," Westy said; "I, for one, would like
to know where we're at." That's just the nice way he talks. It's caused
by his bringing up.

I said, "Oh, dear me, _I for two_, would be delighted to ascertain."

"Where do you think we are?" he said.

"That's easy," I told them; "I know where we are."

"Where are we?" Wig wanted to know.

"We're here," I told him.

"Yes, but what is this?"

"It's a place, that's all I know," Connie piped up.

"Come on, let's wake up the kid," Wig said; "and take a stroll around.
It looks to me like a ball field or something like that. Anyway, those
are tents over there."

We didn't dare to start out without Pee-wee, so we shook him up and
dragged him up and down the aisle and played football with him, and at
last he let out a long groan and we knew we had him started.

"Wh-a-a-t--where--am I?" he yawned.

"We were just going to have a game of one o'cat with you," I told him;
"wake up, it's twenty years later; the peace treaty has just been
signed."

"Who signed it?" he gasped.

"I did," I said; "come on, get up."

If you can once get him on his feet, he usually stays up. I said,
"We're in a land of mystery; we've got Alice in Wonderland tearing her
hair from jealousy. I think we're in somebody's back yard."

"Where's the train?" he asked.

"It went down the street to get a soda," I said.

That opened his eyes all right. "Can you get sodas around here?" he
shouted.

We got hold of a chunk of wood and blocked one of the car wheels and
then started out. We couldn't see very well in the dark, but we made out