As Jim Burton’s big Packard car sped along, the country looked bleak and the fields wan with their yellow corn-stalks.  Even the little shacks where fresh fruit and vegetables had been displayed to motorists were now boarded up.  Their cheerless, deserted look contributed quite as much as the changing foliage to the scene of coldness, desolation.  The sad look which Nature assumes when school opens.  The wind blew and the leaves fell and the West Ketchem scouts fell too, for Scout Harris, who was also blowing.

“That’s what you call a proincidence, how I don’t have to go to school yet, the same as you don’t on account of yours burning down.  Gee whiz, I like camp-fires, but I like school fires better.”

“And you’ll show us how to make a camp-fire?”

“Sure I will; 111 show you how they do at Temple Camp.  Is there anybody living on that island?”

“No one but us, and we’ll have to be going home soon,” said Charlie Norris.

“I like desert islands best,” Pee-wee said; “they remind you of dessert.  Sometimes I spell it that way.  Don’t you care, we have a month yet.  Did you ever eat floating island?  It has gobs of icing floating around in it.  We have that Sunday nights at Temple Camp.  When I said dessert it made me think of it.  Sometimes islands disappear.”

“I bet the ones in that dessert do all right,” laughed Nick Vernon.

“You said it!” Pee-wee vociferated with great emphasis.  “I’ll show you how to make tracking cakes, too, only you can’t eat them.”

“No?”

“No-o-o, they’re for chipmunks and birds to step on so you can save their footprints.  Gee whiz, did you think you could eat them?”

“We didn’t know,” said Fido Norris.

“Gee, there are lots of things I don’t know too,” said Pee-wee generously.  “But anyway I fixed it so a scout could stay at Temple Camp an extra week.”

“Bully for you.  A good turn?”

“You said it.  I gave him a whole pail of berries I picked and he got sick and couldn’t go home.”

“Some fixer.”

“I’ve fixed lots of things.”

“Maybe you can give us all berries the day before our temporary school opens,” said Fido Norton.

“Don’t you worry,” said Pee-wee reassuringly; “maybe the men who are getting it ready will go on a strike; maybe there’ll be measles or whooping cough or something.  I’ve had those.”

“You’re not missing much, hey?”

“You said it.  I’ve been lost in the woods too.  Roy Blakeley says I get lost at C when I sing.  He’s crazy, that feller is.  He started the Silver Foxes.  There’s a feller in that patrol can move his ears without touching them.  I should worry as long as I can move my mouth.  I’ll show you how to flop a fried egg in the pan only you have to look it doesn’t come down on your head.  You can scramble eggs but you can’t unscramble them.  Once one came down on my head.  I took a bee-line hike, too.”