He paused here and there gazing idly into shop windows, he stood gaping at a man who was having trouble with his auto, and at last he wandered into the public library.  The place seemed like a tomb on that Saturday morning in the springtime.  Not a boy was there to be seen.  “Gee whiz, they’ve got something better to do than read books,” he thought to himself.

There at the desk sat the librarian, silent, preoccupied.  In the reading room were a few scattered readers intent on newspapers and magazines.  The place, familiar and pleasant enough to Pee-wee at other times, seemed alien and uninviting at a time of day when he was usually too busy to call upon its quiet resources of treasure.

On this balmy holiday it seemed almost like school; it had a booky, studious atmosphere which turned him against it.  And to complete this impression and make the place abhorrent to him there sat Miss Bunting, the history teacher, in a corner of the reference room with several books spread about her.  To Pee-wee on Saturday morning this seemed nothing less than an insult.

He approached a shelf near the librarian’s desk above which was a sign that read books especially recommended. Here were always a few old time favorites, worth while books made readily available.  From these Pee-wee half-heartedly drew out a copy of Treasure Island and took it to a table.  He knew his Treasure Island.  In a disgruntled mood he sank far down in his chair and opened the book at random.  He was too familiar with the enthralling pages of the famous story to seek solace in it now, but there was nothing else to do and he was too out of sorts to search further.  Presently he was idly skimming over the page before him.

The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was altogether changed.  Although the breeze had now utterly failed, we had made a great deal of way during the night, and were now lying becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast.  Gray-colored woods covered a large part of the surface.  This even tint was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sandbreak in the lower lands, and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others—­some singly, some in clumps; but the general coloring was uniform and sad.  The hills ran up . . .

Pee-wee blinked his eyes, yawned, then suddenly drew himself up into an erect sitting posture and pushed the book from him.  “Gee whiz,” he mused, “that’s what I’d like, to go off to a desert island.  They don’t have any desert islands now; that’s one thing I don’t like about this century.  Hikes and camping and all that make me tired; I’d like to be on a desert island, that’s what I’d like to do.  I’d like to be marooned.  Gee whiz, we only kid ourselves trying to make ourselves think we’re doing things that are wild.  I guess all the desert islands are discovered by now; oh boy, there were lots and lots of them in the seventeenth century; that’s my favorite century, the seventeenth, on account of buried treasure and desert islands.”