CHAPTER XXXI WE MAKE A BARGAIN

 The man said, “I should have kept out of that rut; now I’m in a nice pickle¹.”

“Don’t you care,” I said, “we’ve been getting into the wrong places all day and we’re happy.”

“Pickles² aren’t so bad,” Pee-wee shouted; “I wouldn’t mind being in a whole barrel of pickles. We’ll help you out, only if you’re not charging too much for that garage we’d like to buy it if you’ll cart it to Temple Camp. We’ll give you more than the chickens will give you. There’s a troop up at camp that haven’t got any accommodations and they’ll be coming along in the jitney bus pretty soon. Hey, mister, will you sell us the garage? We’ll give you fourteen cents deposit on it right now.”

“Sure,” I said, “you can take a mortgage for the rest; good idea. Pee-wee, you’re a brick.”

“It’s an inspiration,” Pee-wee said; “we’ll wind our funny-bone hike up with a crazy good turn, hey? We’ll furnish accommodations. Troops don’t have to go to houses because the houses come to them. Everything is the other way round. While they’re on their way back to Catskill Landing they’ll meet a house and we’ll put them in it and send them back to camp.”

“Good idea,” Hervey shouted; “accommodations delivered while you wait; take your house home with you. Let’s all climb up on the top of it.”

“Wait a minute,” Warde said, “this man thinks we’re crazy. Do you mean what you say? If you do I’ll talk to him.”

“We mean a good deal more than what we say,” I said; “that’s a good suggestion of Pee-wee’s and I say let’s follow it. No troop shall leave Temple Camp on account of a house. If they come along the road they shall not pass. We’ll put them in the house and send them back. We defy everything and everybody. What do we care about the housing shortage?”

Warde said, “Well then, keep still a minute and let me talk to the man.” He has a lot of sense, Warde has, I’m glad I’m not him.

He said, “Hey, mister, we’re boy scouts⁴ and we belong at Temple Camp that’s over there in the woods near Black Lake. This road goes around through Hink’s Junction⁵ and around through Pine Hollow to the camp. We were going to take the short cut through the woods but we followed this house instead. So now we think we’d like to buy it and we’ll take it to Temple Camp.”

“We’ll take turns carrying it,” Garry said.

Warde said, “Will you keep still so he’ll know we’re in earnest?”

“It’s a business proposition,” Pee-wee said; “shut up and let Warde talk.”

Then Warde said, just as if he really meant it, he said, “We’d like to buy this portable garage if you’ll sell it to us and take it to Temple Camp. We’ll get you out of the ditch all right when the jitney bus comes along. How much do you want for it?”

The man said he was carting it to Pine Hollow because a farmer there said he would buy it. But he said if we really meant that we wanted it he’d sell it for fifty dollars. He said we’d have to pay him ten dollars more for hauling because Temple Camp was farther than Pine Hollow.

“The house will have a good home as long as it lives,” Bert said. “There are plenty of fresh milk and eggs and everything at Temple Camp.” The man said he guessed there were plenty of fresh scouts there too, if the rest of them were like us. He said he didn’t care much about the garage anyway and he was only taking it away because the land where he lived had been sold and nobody wanted it in Gooseberry Centre.

I said, “Maybe they don’t know there are such things as automobiles⁶.”

So then we got serious and we told him that we’d like to have that garage at camp because when we went on hikes we always brought back souvenirs and anyway because there was a cabin shortage there. We told him that we’d take up a collection when we got there and that if we didn’t get enough money that way we’d give a grand show and charge admission and that he could stay at camp till we gave him the money.

He said, “Will I have to go to the show?”

“Not unless you want to,” I told him.

So then he began asking questions about Temple Camp and he said he liked scouts because they were lively and he didn’t care who he sold the house to only he was afraid on account of it blocking up the road. He said he had more interest in scouts than in chickens because once a scout³ had done him a good turn, but he never knew a chicken to do a kind act.

So we made the bargain with him and he kept laughing all the time, and he said he’d like to go and see Temple Camp, only what was worrying him most was that he was blocking up the road.

“You leave that to us,” Pee-wee said.

I said, “Don’t worry about that; the road is as much to blame as the house is. If we can’t get the house out of the way we’ll get the road out of the way, but anyway we’ll get the house to camp. All we have to do is to wait for the jitney bus to come along and we know Darby Curren and he’ll pull you out all right. We used a gas engine to move a donkey to-day. I guess we ought to be able to move a house with one.”

1 pickle   

n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡

参考例句：

• Mother used to pickle onions.妈妈过去常腌制洋葱。
• Meat can be preserved in pickle.肉可以保存在卤水里。

2 pickles   

n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱

参考例句：

• Most people eat pickles at breakfast. 大多数人早餐吃腌菜。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I want their pickles and wines, and that.' 我要他们的泡菜、美酒和所有其他东西。” 来自英汉文学 - 金银岛

3 scout   

n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索

参考例句：

• He was mistaken for an enemy scout and badly wounded.他被误认为是敌人的侦察兵，受了重伤。
• The scout made a stealthy approach to the enemy position.侦察兵偷偷地靠近敌军阵地。

4 scouts   

侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员

参考例句：

• to join the Scouts 参加童子军
• The scouts paired off and began to patrol the area. 巡逻人员两个一组，然后开始巡逻这个地区。

5 junction   

n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站

参考例句：

• There's a bridge at the junction of the two rivers.两河的汇合处有座桥。
• You must give way when you come to this junction.你到了这个路口必须让路。

6 automobiles   

n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• When automobiles become popular,the use of the horse and buggy passed away. 汽车普及后，就不再使用马和马车了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Automobiles speed in an endless stream along the boulevard. 宽阔的林荫道上，汽车川流不息。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》