“I’ll help you out with the girls,” Pee-wee said; “I know all about girls.  And I’ll help you with the names of the chapters, too.”

“All right,” Mr. Ellsworth said, “I think Pee-wee will prove a valuable collaborator.”

“A which?” Pee-wee said, kind of frightened.

So then we all laughed and Mr. Ellsworth said it was getting late and we’d better settle about collecting books for the soldiers.

We decided that after we got to camp I’d begin writing up our adventures on the trip, but we couldn’t decide how we’d all go in our boat, and that was the thing that troubled us a lot, because the fellows in our troop always hang together and we didn’t like the idea of being separated.

Well, I guess that’s all there is to tell you about the meeting, and in the next chapter I’m going to tell you all about how we collected the books for the fellows in camp, and how the mystery about the boat was solved.  Those are Pee-wee’s words about the mystery of the boat.  I can’t see that there was any mystery about it, but there was another kind of a mystery, believe me, and that kid was the cause of it.  I guess maybe you’ll like the next chapter better than this one.

So long.

CHAPTER II

SWATTING THE SPY

Now I’m going to tell you about how we collected books for soldiers and especially about Pee-wee’s big stunt.

The next morning we started out and by night we had over five hundred books.  Mr. Ellsworth said they were mostly light literature, but if he had only had to carry fifty of them on his shoulder like I did, he’d have thought they were pretty heavy literature, believe me.

This is the way we fixed it.  The Raving Patrol, (that’s Pee-wee’s patrol, you know) used Doctor Harris’s five-passenger Fraud car.  It didn’t go very good and Pumpkin Odell (Raven) said he guessed it was because the wheels were tired—­that’s a joke.  They held up all the houses in Little Valley.  That’s about sumpty—­seven miles or so from Bridgeboro.  They’ve got two stores there and a sign that says “Welcome to Automobilists” and how they’ll be arrested if they don’t obey the speed laws.  Welcome to jail—­good night!

The Elk Patrol (that’s our new patrol, you know) went over to East Bridgeboro with Pinky Dawson’s express wagon (one horse power) and some horse—­I wish you could see him.  The Elks were a pretty lively bunch, I’ll say that, and they cleaned out all the private libraries in East Bridgeboro.  They even got cook-books and arithmetics and books about geometry—­pity the poor soldiers.

The Silver Fox Patrol took care of Bridgeboro.  That’s the best patrol of the whole three.  I’m leader of the Silver Foxes.  The Ravens call us the Silver-plated Foxes, but that’s because we can them the Raving Patrol and the reason we call them the Raving Patrol is on account of Pee-wee.