CHAPTER II.
SATURDAY MORNING Though Pee-wee was without a patrol he was by no means without a troop.
He still held his position of troop mascot and official target for the mirthful Silver Foxes.

He was a whole patrol in himself and held his own against raillery and banter, his stock of retaliatory ammunition seeming never to be exhausted.
"I can handle them with both hands tied behind my back," he boasted, which is readily enough believed since it was mainly his tongue that he used.
But recruits did not flock to Pee-wee's standard.

Perhaps this was partly because of the fall and winter season when the lure of camping and roughing it was in abeyance.

Perhaps it was because he was so small that boys were fain to think that scouting was a thing for children and beneath their dignity.
Once or twice during the winter, Pee-wee piloted some half-convinced and bashful subject to the troop-room, which was an old railroad car (of fond memory) down by the river.

Here, in the cosy warmth of the old cylinder stove, the troop played checkers and read and jollied Pee-wee, which was about all there was to do on winter nights.