Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels Part 29

"And foils a murderer," Connie said; "tell him he's a cute little boy scout, Sam."

"Do you know what I'd do if I had my way?" Pee-wee shouted.

"How many guesses do we have?" I asked him.

"I'd foil those profiteers, that's what I'd do," he said. "Fifteen cents for a cone! I can get three cones for that."

"And still you wouldn't be satisfied," Westy told him.

"Well, if I had your way with me, I'd give it to you," I told him; "but I left it home on the piano."

"Did you hear what that doughnut-man was saying about overhead expenses?" the kid shouted. "I looked up, but I didn't see any. There wasn't even a roof."

Laugh! I thought I'd fall in a fit.

"You can bet I know an overhead expense when I see one," he said, all the while trudging along the road, "and there wasn't any there."

"Overhead expenses are inside," Westy said; "they're the expenses of running a business. It might be the price of a carpet for the floor, see?"

"All you need is a pair of white duck trousers and your diploma with a pink ribbon around it," I told him. "Who in the world taught you all that? You must be studying accountancy."

"A whatancy?" Connie asked.

"That shows how crazy you are," Pee-wee yelled; "how can a carpet that you walk on be overhead? Tell me that!"

"That's easy," I told him; "isn't the roof underfoot? You stand on the roof and it's underfoot. Your overhead expenses may be down in the cellar. Just the same as a scout can do a good turn while he's walking straight ahead. Deny it if you dare?"

"You're crazy," Pee-wee fairly screamed.

"I admit it," I told him.

After we had walked a little way, Westy said, "Just the same, Pee-wee's right, the same as he usually isn't. It would be a good stunt for us to foil those profiteers."

"Only we haven't got any tinfoil," I said.

"Shut up, you're the worst of the lot!" Pee-wee yelled at me. "We've got eighteen dollars left from the movie show, haven't we? I say let's buy some flour and sugar and eggs and cinnamon and ink and glue and make tenderflops and _foil_ the profiteers; that's what _I_ say!"

I said, "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd like to know how you're going to use ink and glue making tenderflops. They'd be kind of sticky, wouldn't they?"

"Sure," Westy said, "and they'd be a kind of a blackish white, using ink."

"He means fountain-pen ink," Connie said, "that's more digestible, it's thinner."

"You're crazy!" the kid yelled. "Wouldn't we have to make signs and glue them up? You can't print with cinnamon or flour, can you? I say let's get all the stuff we need and have Roy make tenderflops and I'll stand on top of the car and shout that they're all smoking hot, and for everybody to be sure to get them for they're only the small sum of two for a cent. I just happened to think of it," he said, "it's an insulation."

"You mean inspiration," Westy said.

"You know what I mean," Pee-wee hollered.

"Suppose you should flop off the top of the car?" I asked him, because there's no telling what may happen when Pee-wee gets to shouting.

"We'd charge extra for that," Connie said.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote C: Technicality is probably what was meant.]

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

A FRIEND IN NEED

Now I'll tell you about tenderflops, because I'm the only one that goes to Temple Camp who knows how to make them. I guess you know what a tenderfoot is; it's a new scout. He's supposed to be tender, see? So a tenderflop is a flip-flop that's named after a tenderfoot, because it's supposed to be tender. There are no such things as tough scouts, so of course, there can't be any such things as tough tenderflops. That's what you call logic.

Now the way that you make tenderflops is with flour and salt and water and cinnamon. You can use eggs if you want to, but you don't have to.

Once I tried peanut b.u.t.ter in them, but they weren't much good. If you put a little maple syrup in, that makes them sweet. Once I made some at home when Charlie Danforth was there and I put wintergreen in, and my sister Marjorie said that was the reason he never came any more.

Cinnamon is better; safety first.

Now the way I usually do is, just when they're frying and beginning to get kind of nice and toasted, sort of, I press my scout badge down on them and that makes a kind of a trade mark on them. It says BE PREPARED.

That's our motto. It doesn't mean anything about the tenderflops.

In about an hour, back we came along the road with a big bag of flour and a bag of salt and a couple of big jugs of maple syrup and some cinnamon. We had on scout smiles, too.

"Down with profiteering," Connie shouted.

"Pee-wee forever!" I said. "Hurrah, for Hoover, Junior! Food will kill the profiteers, don't taste it--I mean waste it."

We had to pay admission fees to get in, but what did _we_ care? We knew the government was on our side, because wasn't the government arresting profiteers?

Believe me, we had some triumphal march across the grounds to our car. I had a bag of flour over my shoulder and my jacket was all white and my face, too. I guess I looked like a clown. I should worry. The cinnamon made the smallest bundle, but we had Westy carry it, because Pee-wee likes cinnamon. Safety first. We had Pee-wee carry the glue, because if he ate that, it would only stick his mouth shut. Believe _me_, we were some parade.

There were a lot of automobiles parked outside the grounds by that time, and the place was filled with people. The animals on the merry-go-round were running away as fast as they could, and girls were screaming for fear they'd fall off--you know how they always do. There were men shouting for people to come and see their shows for a dime, ten cents, and there were shooting galleries and everything. Sandwiches were thirty cents and the bread on them was stale, because Wig bought one. There was a bra.s.s band playing, too.

A lot of people were looking up at our car; I guess they were wondering about it; and just as we were pushing through the crowd, a couple of the head men came down off the platform and one of them said:

"What are you going to do with all that stuff, you boys?"

Westy said, "We're going to make cakes and sell them. We're going to do it inside the car."

We all just laid down our bundles and stood around, kind of scared and disappointed. But anyway, the people who were standing around saw that we were scouts, and most all of them were smiling at us.

The man said, "Well, I guess you've got another guess. You just pack that stuff in there, and go about your business if you don't want to get into a heap of trouble. We'll look after this car."