the man said, “i should have kept out of that rut; now i’m in a nice pickle.”
“don’t you care,” i said, “we’ve been getting into the wrong places all day and we’re happy.”
“pickles aren’t so bad,” pee-wee shouted; “i wouldn’t mind being in a whole barrel of pickles. we’ll help you out, only if you’re not charging too much for that garage we’d like to buy it if you’ll cart it to temple camp. we’ll give you more than the chickens will give you. there’s a troop up at camp that haven’t got any accommodations and they’ll be coming along in the jitney bus pretty soon. hey, mister, will you sell us the garage? we’ll give you fourteen cents deposit on it right now.”
“sure,” i said, “you can take a mortgage for the rest; good idea. pee-wee, you’re a brick.”
“it’s an inspiration,” pee-wee said; “we’ll wind our funny-bone hike up with a crazy good turn, hey? we’ll furnish accommodations. troops don’t have to go to houses because the houses come to them. everything is the other way round. while they’re on their way back to catskill landing they’ll meet a house and we’ll put them in it and send them back to camp.”
“good idea,” hervey shouted; “accommodations delivered while you wait; take your house home with you. let’s all climb up on the top of it.”
“wait a minute,” warde said, “this man thinks we’re crazy. do you mean what you say? if you do i’ll talk to him.”
“we mean a good deal more than what we say,” i said; “that’s a good suggestion of pee-wee’s and i say let’s follow it. no troop shall leave temple camp on account of a house. if they come along the road they shall not pass. we’ll put them in the house and send them back. we defy everything and everybody. what do we care about the housing shortage?”
warde said, “well then, keep still a minute and let me talk to the man.” he has a lot of sense, warde has, i’m glad i’m not him.
he said, “hey, mister, we’re boy scouts and we belong at temple camp that’s over there in the woods near black lake. this road goes around through hink’s junction and around through pine hollow to the camp. we were going to take the short cut through the woods but we followed this house instead. so now we think we’d like to buy it and we’ll take it to temple camp.”
“we’ll take turns carrying it,” garry said.
warde said, “will you keep still so he’ll know we’re in earnest?”
“it’s a business proposition,” pee-wee said; “shut up and let warde talk.”
then warde said, just as if he really meant it, he said, “we’d like to buy this portable garage if you’ll sell it to us and take it to temple camp. we’ll get you out of the ditch all right when the jitney bus comes along. how much do you want for it?”
the man said he was carting it to pine hollow because a farmer there said he would buy it. but he said if we really meant that we wanted it he’d sell it for fifty dollars. he said we’d have to pay him ten dollars more for hauling because temple camp was farther than pine hollow.
“the house will have a good home as long as it lives,” bert said. “there are plenty of fresh milk and eggs and everything at temple camp.” the man said he guessed there were plenty of fresh scouts there too, if the rest of them were like us. he said he didn’t care much about the garage anyway and he was only taking it away because the land where he lived had been sold and nobody wanted it in gooseberry centre.
i said, “maybe they don’t know there are such things as automobiles.”
so then we got serious and we told him that we’d like to have that garage at camp because when we went on hikes we always brought back souvenirs and anyway because there was a cabin shortage there. we told him that we’d take up a collection when we got there and that if we didn’t get enough money that way we’d give a grand show and charge admission and that he could stay at camp till we gave him the money.
he said, “will i have to go to the show?”
“not unless you want to,” i told him.
so then he began asking questions about temple camp and he said he liked scouts because they were lively and he didn’t care who he sold the house to only he was afraid on account of it blocking up the road. he said he had more interest in scouts than in chickens because once a scout had done him a good turn, but he never knew a chicken to do a kind act.
so we made the bargain with him and he kept laughing all the time, and he said he’d like to go and see temple camp, only what was worrying him most was that he was blocking up the road.
“you leave that to us,” pee-wee said.
i said, “don’t worry about that; the road is as much to blame as the house is. if we can’t get the house out of the way we’ll get the road out of the way, but anyway we’ll get the house to camp. all we have to do is to wait for the jitney bus to come along and we know darby curren and he’ll pull you out all right. we used a gas engine to move a donkey to-day. i guess we ought to be able to move a house with one.”
