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Show I PEE WEE OFFICIATES j How an "Abnormal" Child's Funeral Fu-neral Resurrected Love. By ORA M. M'DERMOTT. The wind whisked through the foxtails fox-tails on the unpretentious hill and set them to conciliatory bowing. Above, on the crest of the low browed mountain, moun-tain, it taunted the pines into deep throated grumbles as they strained their shaggy tops toward the cloud-strewn cloud-strewn sky. The world slumbered in a blue and gold haze, but Pee Wee was at outs with the scheme of things. In this little health resort where a shuttered hotel and natural hot springs sufficed to satisfy all expenditure ex-penditure of energy which the summer sum-mer visitors felt inclined toward making, there was a minimum of employment em-ployment for a small girl's activities. Maternal edict had boxed up her dolls at home, and only a green flannel flan-nel rooster had managed to be smuggled smug-gled with her Into this pocket of the world. But there is a certain lack of temperament tem-perament in a green flannel rooster, as Pee Wee had been forced to acknowledge ac-knowledge after certain moods had revealed him entirely Inadequate. Today To-day he was banished under mother's bureau, where he lay catching the dust in his green glass eyes, whils Pee Wee took her restless little spirit forth to hunt adventure and let the wind blow through the curls that crowded hotly upon her shoulders. Mother was asleep. It was usually so. Of course this was due to mother's moth-er's being delicate, but it made life often lonesome for Pee Wee, whose sleeping hours were short and fleet. She had sat at the foot of the bed and told excited tales about the red dragon and the blue princess today until mother had pleaded with her to "Please run away somewhere." In the black mist of gloom which had swept down upon her at this deprecia-" deprecia-" tion of her fiction's charm she had rushed out to the porch for consola- . KFtk ' "Please Cornel" tion. An old man drowsed in the carpet-seated rocking chair, snoring with exasperating finality. " Hong, the Chinese cook, was scrubbing the dining din-ing room floor, and his weird singing floated out through the window from which flowered curtains fluttered gaily. But neither peace nor industry was welcome to Pee Wee, so she turned from their -vicinity and rambled ram-bled around toward the dust barrel where she was accustomed to find dead mice that Hong shook out from mouse traps. To understand her reasons for this ghoulish predilection one must take her age into consideration. She was just old enough to be feeling the birth-pangs birth-pangs of personality and too young to resent them. Burying something was beginning to be an emotional Indul- gence already. Having as yet no past sins nor dead affections to bury, she found satisfaction in objective funerals funer-als where the role of corpse was played play-ed by anything ranging from a stick of kindling to a gold fish. At present dead mice- were in favor, and just beyond be-yond the barbed wire fence she had an artistic graveyard, the extension of which was one of her dear desires. So Pee Wee rummaged through the dust barrel. There were three mice In its depths, but one was too tiny and the other rather untidy looking. Finally she decided on the third, a plump., brown fellow who deserved a respectable funeral and promised to make a good-sized grave. She knew where poison berries grew, and with their luscious redness for decoration she would have a masterpiece of a funeral. Yet stay, what fun was a funeral without participants? The only other Bmall girl in the establishment had left yesterday. There would be no one but her self to enjoy the artistic mournfulness of it all. That would be t waste of talent. But the mouse would not keep until tomorrow, and perhaps she rr.igM never again find one so satisfactorily deceased, assuredly as-suredly some mortuary accomplice must be found at once. Perhaps some one was upon the hill. Optimistically she waded through the foxtails, holding her mouse firmly by Its tail. Her skirts ballooned with the wind, and she breathed deep. After all, how good it was to walk in short dresses. When . she reached the top of a knoll the glimpse of a blue skirt arrested her attention. "Hoo-hoo, you in blue-oo," she shouted shout-ed and raced toward it, waving the mouse in the air. "Mercy, child," cried the wearer of the blue skirt, "throw away that nasty mouse." "No no," breathed Pee Wee, "I'm going to bury it. You come help me." "Bury it? Why, how disgusting," the girl exclaimed. "You're not normal, nor-mal, child." tt mattered not to Pee Wee that she was unacquainted with her negative nega-tive quality. She accepted its absence ab-sence notwithstanding. "No, but I'm lonesome," she walled. "Please come. You needn't do anything any-thing but watch me." "I'm lonesome, too," said the girl with a catch in her voice, and leaning lean-ing her head upon one hand she began to tear at some foxtails with the other. "Well, come on then," Pee Wee urged with logical conviction. But the girl shook her head and silently bent lower. The silence grated on Pee Wee's restless little nerves. She could not choose between pleading and raging, so she decided on neither. Hurt and dissappointed, she finally turned and rushed blindly up the hill again, where she flung herself down by the side of a rock and shed a few acrid tears. After Aft-er more refused to come she lay kicking kick-ing her heels in fierce meditation on the whyness of rocks and winds and mice and mothers. "What's the trouble, kiddie?" a man's voice asked suddenly. Pee Wee sat up, one curl in her mouth. "I'm lonesome," she explained. "So am I," he announced gravely. "I want some one to help me bury this" and the mouse was produced. "O ho," he said, "I see. Well, will I do?" Pee Wee rose at once and took him trustfully by the hand, while a smile fought its way across her damp face. "Hm-hm. You be minister," she said coyly. "Well. But er what religion did the mouse profess before he passed into the Great Beyond?" She stared at him uncomprehend-ingly. uncomprehend-ingly. "I mean, where has his soul gone?" he elucidated. Pee Wee speculated. A great orange butterfly lunged by, striving against the wind. With inspiration Pee Wee waved her fingers toward it. "That's his soul. It hasn't gone any place yet. He died just today, you know," she beamed. "I see," he remarked seriously. During this time Pee Wee was leading lead-ing him toward the girl in blue. With feminine barbarism she wished to exhibit ex-hibit her capture. Perhaps even the girl in blue might be moved to join them and increase the pageantry of the occasion. Before the man had seen the girl they were upon her, and Pee Wee asked patronizingly: "Would you like to be at my funeral funer-al now? I'll let you be chief mourner if you want." The girl looked up, .and the man looked down. Her eyes were red from crying, and his had weary circles cir-cles under them. "Oh," they both spoke at once, and she stiffened. "I thought I mean. I have been chief mourner," he said confusedly. "No, you're minister," said Pee Wee. "Come on with the funeral." "I I don't think I mean, it's too late for a funeral," said the girl, turning turn-ing away listlessly. Suddenly the man dropped Pee Wee's hand and bent over the girl, talking fast, and, to Pee Wee. unintelligibly. unin-telligibly. "It isn't it isn't." he insisted. Then they Ignored Pee Wee entirely. "Are you going to have a funeral or aren't you?" Pee Wee. demanded crossly, after a period of strain. . The man turned to her. "No. we're going to have a resurrection;" resur-rection;" and he helped the girl to her feet. Pee Wee was deeply cut at his treachery. But somehow this time a steely pride supported her. She set her chin and shook out her curls. "All right," she said, "all right." When she. had put a few steps between be-tween heTself and them, she said again: "All right. But you can't have my mouse in your resurrection." Then she dropped it into a crevice of two rocks and went back to the hotel to beg a cookie of the Chinaman, China-man, leaving the lovers to their resurrection resur-rection and the foxtails to the wind. |