Public-domain ebook
Pee-wee Harris: Fixer
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In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Humour·Adventure
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #61094.
The opening · free to read
He Appears
Pee-wee Harris, or rather the left leg of Pee-wee Harris, emerged from an upper side window of his home, and was presently followed by the rest of Pee-wee, clad in his scout suit. He crept cautiously along an ornamental shingled projection till he reached the safety of the porch roof, where he stood pulling up his stocking and critically surveying the shady street below him.
The roof of the front porch was approachable by a less venturesome route than that of the ornamental coping. This was via the apartment of Pee-wee’s sister Elsie, and out through one of her prettily curtained front windows.
But he had been baffled in his attempt to violate this neutral territory by finding the door to her sanctum locked. He had demanded admittance and had thereupon heard whispering voices within. A hurried consultation between Elsie and her mother had resulted in a policy fatal to Pee-wee’s plans. Not only that, but worse; his honor as a scout had been impugned.
“Don’t let him in, I locked the door on purpose.” This from Elsie.
“I think he just wants to get to the porch roof,” Mrs. Harris had said, to the accompaniment of a sewing machine.
“I don’t care, I’m not going to have him going through here; if he sees my costume every boy in town will know about it and they’ve all got sisters. Everybody who’s invited to the masquerade will know exactly what I’m going to wear. I might just as well not go in costume. You know how he is, he simply couldn’t keep his mouth shut. What on earth does he want to do on the porch roof anyway? If he’s not well enough to go to school, I shouldn’t think he’d be climbing out on the front porch.”
“I suppose it’s something about his radio,” Mrs. Harris replied in her usual tone of gentle tolerance. “He’s going back to school on Monday.”
“Thank goodness for that,” was Elsie’s comment.
“_That shows how much you know about scouts!_” the baffled hero had roared. “_It’s girls that can’t keep secrets!_ If you think anybody’d ever find out anything from me about what you’re going to wear——”
“Do go away from the door, Walter,” Mrs. Harris had pled. “You know that Elsie is very, very busy, and I am helping her. She has only till Wednesday to get her costume ready.”
Conscious of his prowess and resource, Pee-wee had not condescended to discuss a matter involving his manly honor. He would discourse upon that theme later when no barrier intervened.
He had returned to his own room and immediately become involved in a formidable system of rigging which lay spread out upon the bed and on the adjacent floor. The component parts of this were a rake-handle, two broomsticks lashed together, a couple of pulleys, several large screw-hooks, and endless miles of wire and cord.
This sprawling apparatus was Pee-wee’s aerial, intended to catch the wandering voices of the night and transmit them to Pee-wee’s ear. In the present instance, however, it caught Pee-wee’s foot instead, the section of rigging which was spread upon the bed was drawn into the entanglement, and our hero, after a brief and frantic struggle, was broadcasted upon the floor.
This was the first dramatic episode connected with Pee-wee’s radio. It was directly after he had extricated himself from the baffling meshes of his own handiwork that he had emerged from the window of his room, left foot foremost; which conclusively disproves the oft-repeated assertion of Roy Blakeley that Pee-wee always went head first.
Mug
Simultaneously with Pee-wee’s appearance on the roof of the front porch the chintz curtains in his sister’s window were cautiously drawn together so as to confound any attempt to look within. Pee-wee was too preoccupied to take note of this insult.
His eyes and thoughts were fixed upon a large elm tree which grew close to the sidewalk some yards distant across the lawn. The tree was stately, as only an elm knows how to be, its tall, thick trunk being free of branches to a point almost level with the roof of the house. At that height great limbs spread out over the sidewalk and shaded a large area of the Harris lawn. Pee-wee studied this tree with the critical eyes of an engineer.
He next drew out of the depths of one of his trousers pockets a ball of fishing-line, and out of the depths of the opposite pocket the detachable handle of a flat-iron. This he tied to the cord which he proceeded to unwind until he had released enough for his purpose. He frowned upon the distant elm tree as if he intended to annihilate it. Meanwhile, the muffled hum of the sewing machine could be heard through his sister’s window.
Pee-wee now replaced the ball of cord in his pocket and threw the flat-iron handle into the branches of the tree. It fell to the ground with the attached cord dangling after it. He pulled it up and cast it again. Twice, thrice, it failed to find lodgment in the branches. If it had been a kite or a beanbag or one of those twirling, ascending toys, it would have stayed in the tree upon the first cast, out of pure perversity. But the flat-iron handle had not the fugitive instinct, it would not stay.
Not only that, but a new complication presented itself. Mug, the puppy who resided with the Harris family, made a dramatic appearance on the lawn below just in time to catch the flat-iron handle as Pee-wee was about to lift it.
“You let go of that!” Pee-wee shouted. “You drop that, Mug, do you hear?”
But Mug, more interested in adventure than in science, did not drop it. Pee-wee tried to pull it away but Mug rolled over on his back in the full spirit of this tug of war, and was presently so much involved with the cord that obedience to Pee-wee’s thunderous commands was out of the question. For a few moments it seemed as if Mug might be hauled up bodily and made an integral part of the aerial.
Pee-wee endeavored by lassoing maneuvers and jump-rope tactics to release the enmeshed pup, using the entire porch roof for his stage of action. He loosed the cord, imparted long wavy motions to it, jerked it, pulled it to the right, pulled it to left, but all to no avail.
At last the puppy extricated himself, and with no regard at all for his harrowing experience, immediately made a dash for the departing flat-iron handle, caught it, shook it, ran half-way across the lawn with it, shook it again, and darted around a bush with it.
The bush was not a participant in this world war. Pee-wee pulled with all his might and main, part of the bush came away, the puppy pounced upon the fleeing fragment, it dropped from the cord, and the puppy with refreshed energy caught the flat-iron handle again, bracing his forelegs for the tussle, his tail wagging frantically. Thus has every great scientist encountered hardships and obstacles.
“You get away from that now, do you hear what I tell you!” Pee-wee roared.
He might have pulled the cord away from his diminutive antagonist but that it caught in a crack between two shingles at the edge of the porch roof. The cause of science seemed to be baffled at every turn, and on the edge as well. If Mug rolled over on his back again all hope might be lost in new complications.
In desperation, Pee-wee glanced about him for something to throw at Mug by way of diverting his attention to fresh novelties. The puppy was already on his back, the cord wound around one of his forelegs. The roof was clear of all possible missiles. Pee-wee pulled out a loose shingle and hurled it down but Mug saw it not.
Then Pee-wee did something which showed his power of sacrifice. He pulled out of his pocket the sole remaining cocoanut-ball from a purchase of three—for a cent. It was heavy, and sticky, and encased in tissue paper. There was no time to take even a single bite of it.
“Here you go, Mug! Here you go, Mug!” he called.
The new temptation enabled Mug to extricate himself. He did not care for candy but he was a ready adventurer in the matter of sports. His preoccupation with the rolling cocoanut-ball gave Pee-wee the opportunity to crawl cautiously to the edge of the roof and disentangle the cord where it had caught.
He now hurled the flat-iron handle with all his might up into the branches of the distant tree and there it stuck. To make certain of its security he pulled, first gently, then harder. It held fast.
Having successfully accomplished this part of his enterprise, he cast a wistful glance down upon the cocoanut-ball which Mug was pushing about the lawn with his nose.
Just then the window of his sister’s room was flung open.
“I’m putting up my aerial, and if Anna kept Mug in the cellar like you told her to do, this cord wouldn’t have got all tangled up in the roof so I couldn’t pull it away from him and he got all tangled up in it too because Anna didn’t keep him in the cellar like you told her to do, I heard you. And I lost a good cocoanut-ball on account of her.”
“Walter,” said Mrs. Harris. “You shouldn’t be climbing and you shouldn’t be eating cocoanut-balls, when you’re just getting over the grippe.”
“_I didn’t eat it, I told you!_”
“Well, you come right in here and don’t you climb around on that ledge again.”
“Then I’m going to bring my stuff through here,” Pee-wee warned, as he climbed in through the window. “I’ve got the first part all done now and all I’ve got to do is bring the aerial out and tie it to the cord that’s on the roof of the porch and then all I have to do is to go down and then climb up the tree where the other end of the cord is and that way I can pull one end of the aerial out to the tree and after that all I have to do is to go up and drop a cord with a lot of hooks and things on it down onto the porch roof and get hold of this end of the aerial and pull it up to the attic window and then I’ll have the aerial stretched from the attic window to the tree where it can catch the sound waves, d’you see?”
“Good heavens!” said Elsie. “Talk of sound waves!”
Pee-wee now paused to glance about at the litter which filled his sister’s room. The multi-colored evidences of intensive manufacture were all about, on the bed, on the collapsible cutting-table, on and about the wicker sewing stand, in the jaws of the sewing machine. There was a riot of color, and a kind of atmosphere of cooperative ingenuity which even the masculine invader was conscious of. This was no ordinary task of dressmaking. A queer-looking specimen of headgear with a facsimile snake on the front of it testified to that.
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