So then I went to bed and I lay awake thinking about everything that happened. What I thought about most was why Jake Holden hadn’t come and told my mother and father like I heard him say he was going to do. You remember how I heard him say that. So that was a mystery—that’s what Pee-wee would call it. And I was wondering why he hadn’t come to the house to give them that note he had found. Because I knew Jake Holden (he always called me “Scouty”) and he liked me, too, and I knew he would sure have come to the house if something hadn’t happened.
Now that I was all calmed down, as you might say, I wasn’t surprised any more about no one reading the signal, because maybe it didn’t show very plain in Bridgeboro and anyway, most grown people seem to think that signalling and all that kind of thing are lots of fun for scouts, but not much use except when grown people, and especially the navy, do it.
Anyway, I should worry about grown people, because we have plenty of fun.
Oh, boy, didn’t I sleep that night! When I got up I made up my mind that I’d go to Jake Holden’s shanty, just for the fun of it, and find out why he didn’t come and tell my family that I was dead. Because, if I was dead, he sure ought to have come and told them. Of course, I knew I _wasn’t_ dead, but anyway, how did he know that?
After breakfast I did my good turn—I turned my sister Ruth’s bed around for her so as it faced the bay window. I was going to turn it twice and call it two good turns, but she said that wouldn’t be fair—that that wouldn’t be two good turns. I said it would be just as fair as Pee-wee turning the ice-cream freezer till the cream was all frozen and then saying he did a hundred good turns. Then she threw a tennis ball at me, but it missed me. That’s one thing about girls, they can’t throw a ball. They can’t whistle, either.
Now comes another adventure. After breakfast I went to Marshtown (that’s a few houses down near the river) to Jake Holden’s shanty. It’s a funny kind of a place made out of barrel staves and part of a boat all jumbled up together, and it looks kind of like a chicken coop. He lives all alone and kind of camps out. He’s a nice man, you can bet, only you have to get on the right side of him. If you don’t get on the right side of him the safest place is behind him. He catches fish and crabs and goes around town selling them. He taught me how to cook.