He took the callers into a room with a desk in the middle of it and sat down at this, facing them, his legs sticking out through the space in the middle.

Then he opened the large book as if making ready to close somebody up in it as one presses a flower.
He contemplated Pee-wee with a rather curious frown as he listened to what Ham and then Peter (greatly agitated) had to say.
Our young hero, indeed, presented anything but a creditable picture.

The old gray sweater used by the man who took care of the furnace in Pee-wee's home, the cap which he held, and his grimy face, made him look like a terrible example of hoodlumism; a trolley-car hoodlum, an apple-stealing and stone-throwing and hooky-playing hoodlum; a hole-in-the-ball-field-fence hoodlum.

Nor did the terrible scowl with which he now challenged fate and the world help to make him look like the boy on the cover of the scout manual; the boy that Peter knew and worshipped.
"Well now," drawled Peace Justice Fee, casting a tolerant side glance at Pee-wee, "you tell me this whole business and you tell me the _plain truth_.

See ?" "Sure I will," Pee-wee said; "I'll tell you all my adventures--" "Never mind about your adventures, and watch out, because the first lie you tell--" The justice held up a warning finger.