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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Penrod, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Penrod
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Release Date: March 14, 2006 [EBook #402]
+Last Updated: March 3, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PENROD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PENROD
+
+
+By Booth Tarkington
+
+
+
+To
+
+John, Donald And Booth Jameson
+
+From A Grateful Uncle
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.      A Boy and His Dog
+     II.     Romance
+     III.    The Costume
+     IV.     Desperation
+     V.      The Pageant of the Table Round
+     VI.     Evening
+     VII.    Evils of Drink
+     VIII.   School
+     IX.     Soaring
+     X.      Uncle John
+     XI.     Fidelity of a Little Dog
+     XII.    Miss Rennsdale Accepts
+     XIII.   The Smallpox Medicine
+     XIV.    Maurice Levy's Constitution
+     XV.     The Two Families
+     XVI.    The New Star
+     XVII.   Retiring from the Show-Business
+     XVIII.  Music
+     XIX.    The Inner Boy
+     XX.     Brothers of Angels
+     XXI.    Rupe Collins
+     XXII.   The Imitator
+     XXIII.  Coloured Troops in Action
+     XXIV.   “Little Gentleman”
+      XXV.    Tar
+     XXVI.   The Quiet Afternoon
+     XXVII.  Conclusion of the Quiet Afternoon
+     XXVIII. Twelve
+     XXIX.   Fanchon
+     XXX.    The Birthday Party
+     XXXI.   Over the Fence
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I A BOY AND HIS DOG
+
+Penrod sat morosely upon the back fence and gazed with envy at Duke, his
+wistful dog.
+
+A bitter soul dominated the various curved and angular surfaces known
+by a careless world as the face of Penrod Schofield. Except in solitude,
+that face was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod had
+come into his twelfth year wearing an expression carefully trained to be
+inscrutable. Since the world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere
+defensive instinct prompted him to give it as little as possible to lay
+hold upon. Nothing is more impenetrable than the face of a boy who has
+learned this, and Penrod's was habitually as fathomless as the depth
+of his hatred this morning for the literary activities of Mrs. Lora
+Rewbush--an almost universally respected fellow citizen, a lady of
+charitable and poetic inclinations, and one of his own mother's most
+intimate friends.
+
+Mrs. Lora Rewbush had written something which she called “The Children's
+Pageant of the Table Round,” and it was to be performed in public that
+very afternoon at the Women's Arts and Guild Hall for the benefit of the
+Coloured Infants' Betterment Society. And if any flavour of sweetness
+remained in the nature of Penrod Schofield after the dismal trials of
+the school-week just past, that problematic, infinitesimal remnant was
+made pungent acid by the imminence of his destiny to form a prominent
+feature of the spectacle, and to declaim the loathsome sentiments of a
+character named upon the programme the Child Sir Lancelot.
+
+After each rehearsal he had plotted escape, and only ten days earlier
+there had been a glimmer of light: Mrs. Lora Rewbush caught a very
+bad cold, and it was hoped it might develop into pneumonia; but she
+recovered so quickly that not even a rehearsal of the Children's Pageant
+was postponed. Darkness closed in. Penrod had rather vaguely debated
+plans for a self-mutilation such as would make his appearance as the
+Child Sir Lancelot inexpedient on public grounds; it was a heroic
+and attractive thought, but the results of some extremely sketchy
+preliminary experiments caused him to abandon it.
+
+There was no escape; and at last his hour was hard upon him. Therefore
+he brooded on the fence and gazed with envy at his wistful Duke.
+
+The dog's name was undescriptive of his person, which was obviously
+the result of a singular series of mesalliances. He wore a grizzled
+moustache and indefinite whiskers; he was small and shabby, and looked
+like an old postman. Penrod envied Duke because he was sure Duke would
+never be compelled to be a Child Sir Lancelot. He thought a dog free and
+unshackled to go or come as the wind listeth. Penrod forgot the life he
+led Duke.
+
+There was a long soliloquy upon the fence, a plaintive monologue without
+words: the boy's thoughts were adjectives, but they were expressed by
+a running film of pictures in his mind's eye, morbidly prophetic of the
+hideosities before him. Finally he spoke aloud, with such spleen that
+Duke rose from his haunches and lifted one ear in keen anxiety.
+
+     “'I hight Sir Lancelot du Lake, the Child,
+     Gentul-hearted, meek, and mild.
+     What though I'm BUT a littul child,
+     Gentul-hearted, meek, and----'  OOF!”
+
+All of this except “oof” was a quotation from the Child Sir Lancelot, as
+conceived by Mrs. Lora Rewbush. Choking upon it, Penrod slid down from
+the fence, and with slow and thoughtful steps entered a one-storied wing
+of the stable, consisting of a single apartment, floored with cement and
+used as a storeroom for broken bric-a-brac, old paint-buckets, decayed
+garden-hose, worn-out carpets, dead furniture, and other condemned odds
+and ends not yet considered hopeless enough to be given away.
+
+In one corner stood a large box, a part of the building itself: it was
+eight feet high and open at the top, and it had been constructed as a
+sawdust magazine from which was drawn material for the horse's bed in
+a stall on the other side of the partition. The big box, so high and
+towerlike, so commodious, so suggestive, had ceased to fulfil its
+legitimate function; though, providentially, it had been at least half
+full of sawdust when the horse died. Two years had gone by since that
+passing; an interregnum in transportation during which Penrod's father
+was “thinking” (he explained sometimes) of an automobile. Meanwhile, the
+gifted and generous sawdust-box had served brilliantly in war and peace:
+it was Penrod's stronghold.
+
+There was a partially defaced sign upon the front wall of the box; the
+donjon-keep had known mercantile impulses:
+
+     The O. K. RaBiT Co.
+     PENROD ScHoFiELD AND CO.
+     iNQuiRE FOR PRicEs
+
+This was a venture of the preceding vacation, and had netted, at one
+time, an accrued and owed profit of $1.38. Prospects had been brightest
+on the very eve of cataclysm. The storeroom was locked and guarded, but
+twenty-seven rabbits and Belgian hares, old and young, had perished here
+on a single night--through no human agency, but in a foray of cats, the
+besiegers treacherously tunnelling up through the sawdust from the small
+aperture which opened into the stall beyond the partition. Commerce has
+its martyrs.
+
+Penrod climbed upon a barrel, stood on tiptoe, grasped the rim of the
+box; then, using a knot-hole as a stirrup, threw one leg over the top,
+drew himself up, and dropped within. Standing upon the packed sawdust,
+he was just tall enough to see over the top.
+
+Duke had not followed him into the storeroom, but remained near the open
+doorway in a concave and pessimistic attitude. Penrod felt in a dark
+corner of the box and laid hands upon a simple apparatus consisting of
+an old bushel-basket with a few yards of clothes-line tied to each of
+its handles. He passed the ends of the lines over a big spool, which
+revolved upon an axle of wire suspended from a beam overhead, and, with
+the aid of this improvised pulley, lowered the empty basket until it
+came to rest in an upright position upon the floor of the storeroom at
+the foot of the sawdust-box.
+
+“Eleva-ter!” shouted Penrod. “Ting-ting!”
+
+Duke, old and intelligently apprehensive, approached slowly, in a
+semicircular manner, deprecatingly, but with courtesy. He pawed the
+basket delicately; then, as if that were all his master had expected of
+him, uttered one bright bark, sat down, and looked up triumphantly. His
+hypocrisy was shallow: many a horrible quarter of an hour had taught him
+his duty in this matter.
+
+“El-e-VAY-ter!” shouted Penrod sternly. “You want me to come down there
+to you?”
+
+Duke looked suddenly haggard. He pawed the basket feebly again and,
+upon another outburst from on high, prostrated himself flat. Again
+threatened, he gave a superb impersonation of a worm.
+
+“You get in that el-e-VAY-ter!”
+
+Reckless with despair, Duke jumped into the basket, landing in a
+dishevelled posture, which he did not alter until he had been drawn
+up and poured out upon the floor of sawdust with the box. There,
+shuddering, he lay in doughnut shape and presently slumbered.
+
+It was dark in the box, a condition that might have been remedied by
+sliding back a small wooden panel on runners, which would have let in
+ample light from the alley; but Penrod Schofield had more interesting
+means of illumination. He knelt, and from a former soap-box, in a
+corner, took a lantern, without a chimney, and a large oil-can, the leak
+in the latter being so nearly imperceptible that its banishment
+from household use had seemed to Penrod as inexplicable as it was
+providential.
+
+He shook the lantern near his ear: nothing splashed; there was no sound
+but a dry clinking. But there was plenty of kerosene in the can; and he
+filled the lantern, striking a match to illumine the operation. Then he
+lit the lantern and hung it upon a nail against the wall. The sawdust
+floor was slightly impregnated with oil, and the open flame quivered in
+suggestive proximity to the side of the box; however, some rather deep
+charrings of the plank against which the lantern hung offered evidence
+that the arrangement was by no means a new one, and indicated at least a
+possibility of no fatality occurring this time.
+
+Next, Penrod turned up the surface of the sawdust in another corner
+of the floor, and drew forth a cigar-box in which were half a
+dozen cigarettes, made of hayseed and thick brown wrapping paper, a
+lead-pencil, an eraser, and a small note-book, the cover of which was
+labelled in his own handwriting:
+
+“English Grammar. Penrod Schofield. Room 6, Ward School Nomber Seventh.”
+
+The first page of this book was purely academic; but the study of
+English undefiled terminated with a slight jar at the top of the second:
+“Nor must an adverb be used to modif----”
+
+Immediately followed:
+
+     “HARoLD RAMoREZ THE RoADAGENT
+     OR WiLD LiFE AMoNG THE
+     ROCKY MTS.”
+
+And the subsequent entries in the book appeared to have little concern
+with Room 6, Ward School Nomber Seventh.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II ROMANCE
+
+The author of “Harold Ramorez,” etc., lit one of the hayseed cigarettes,
+seated himself comfortably, with his back against the wall and his
+right shoulder just under the lantern, elevated his knees to support the
+note-book, turned to a blank page, and wrote, slowly and earnestly:
+
+“CHAPITER THE SIXTH”
+
+
+He took a knife from his pocket, and, broodingly, his eyes upon the
+inward embryos of vision, sharpened his pencil. After that, he extended
+a foot and meditatively rubbed Duke's back with the side of his shoe.
+Creation, with Penrod, did not leap, full-armed, from the brain; but
+finally he began to produce. He wrote very slowly at first, and then
+with increasing rapidity; faster and faster, gathering momentum and
+growing more and more fevered as he sped, till at last the true fire
+came, without which no lamp of real literature may be made to burn.
+
+
+Mr. Wilson reched for his gun but our hero had him covred and soon said
+Well I guess you don't come any of that on me my freind.
+
+Well what makes you so sure about it sneered the other bitting his lip
+so savageley that the blood ran. You are nothing but a common Roadagent
+any way and I do not propose to be bafled by such, Ramorez laughed at
+this and kep Mr. Wilson covred by his ottomatick.
+
+Soon the two men were struggling together in the death-roes but soon Mr
+Wilson got him bound and gaged his mouth and went away for awhile leavin
+our hero, it was dark and he writhd at his bonds writhing on the floor
+wile the rats came out of their holes and bit him and vernim got all
+over him from the floor of that helish spot but soon he managed to push
+the gag out of his mouth with the end of his toungeu and got all his
+bonds off.
+
+Soon Mr Wilson came back to tant him with his helpless condition flowed
+by his gang of detectives and they said Oh look at Ramorez sneering at
+his plight and tanted him with his helpless condition because Ramorez
+had put the bonds back sos he would look the same but could throw them
+off him when he wanted to Just look at him now sneered they. To hear him
+talk you would thought he was hot stuff and they said Look at him now,
+him that was going to do so much, Oh I would not like to be in his fix.
+
+Soon Harold got mad at this and jumped up with blasing eyes throwin off
+his bonds like they were air Ha Ha sneered he I guess you better not
+talk so much next time. Soon there flowed another awful struggle and
+siezin his ottomatick back from Mr Wilson he shot two of the detectives
+through the heart Bing Bing went the ottomatick and two more went to
+meet their Maker only two detectives left now and so he stabbed one and
+the scondrel went to meet his Maker for now our hero was fighting
+for his very life. It was dark in there now for night had falen and a
+terrible view met the eye Blood was just all over everything and the
+rats were eatin the dead men.
+
+Soon our hero manged to get his back to the wall for he was fighting
+for his very life now and shot Mr Wilson through the abodmen Oh said Mr
+Wilson you---- ---- ---- (The dashes are Penrod's.)
+
+Mr Wilson stagerd back vile oaths soilin his lips for he was in pain Why
+you---- ----you sneered he I will get you yet---- ----you Harold Ramorez
+
+The remainin scondrel had an ax which he came near our heros head with
+but missed him and ramand stuck in the wall Our heros amunition was
+exhaused what was he to do, the remanin scondrel would soon get his ax
+lose so our hero sprung forward and bit him till his teeth met in the
+flech for now our hero was fighting for his very life. At this the
+remanin scondrel also cursed and swore vile oaths. Oh sneered he----
+---- ----you Harold Ramorez what did you bite me for Yes sneered Mr
+Wilson also and he has shot me in the abdomen too the----
+
+Soon they were both cursin and reviln him together Why you---- ---- ----
+---- ----sneered they what did you want to injure us for----you Harold
+Ramorez you have not got any sence and you think you are so much but you
+are no better than anybody else and you are a---- ---- ---- ---- ----
+----
+
+Soon our hero could stand this no longer. If you could learn to act like
+gentlmen said he I would not do any more to you now and your low vile
+exppresions have not got any effect on me only to injure your own self
+when you go to meet your Maker Oh I guess you have had enogh for one day
+and I think you have learned a lesson and will not soon atemp to beard
+Harold Ramorez again so with a tantig laugh he cooly lit a cigarrete and
+takin the keys of the cell from Mr Wilson poket went on out.
+
+Soon Mr Wilson and the wonded detective manged to bind up their wonds
+and got up off the floor---- ----it I will have that dasstads life now
+sneered they if we have to swing for it---- ---- ---- ----him he shall
+not eccape us again the low down---- ---- ---- ---- ----
+
+Chapiter seventh
+
+A mule train of heavily laden burros laden with gold from the mines was
+to be seen wondering among the highest clifts and gorgs of the Rocky Mts
+and a tall man with a long silken mustash and a cartigde belt could be
+heard cursin vile oaths because he well knew this was the lair of Harold
+Ramorez Why---- ---- ----you you---- ---- ---- ---- mules you sneered he
+because the poor mules were not able to go any quicker ---- you I will
+show you Why---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----it sneered he his oaths growing
+viler and viler I will whip you---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----you
+sos you will not be able to walk for a week---- ----you you mean old----
+---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----mules you
+
+Scarcly had the vile words left his lips when----
+
+
+“PENROD!”
+
+It was his mother's voice, calling from the back porch.
+
+Simultaneously, the noon whistles began to blow, far and near; and the
+romancer in the sawdust-box, summoned prosaically from steep mountain
+passes above the clouds, paused with stubby pencil halfway from lip to
+knee. His eyes were shining: there was a rapt sweetness in his gaze. As
+he wrote, his burden had grown lighter; thoughts of Mrs. Lora Rewbush
+had almost left him; and in particular as he recounted (even by
+the chaste dash) the annoyed expressions of Mr. Wilson, the wounded
+detective, and the silken moustached mule-driver, he had felt
+mysteriously relieved concerning the Child Sir Lancelot. Altogether he
+looked a better and a brighter boy.
+
+“Pen-ROD!”
+
+The rapt look faded slowly. He sighed, but moved not.
+
+“Penrod! We're having lunch early just on your account, so you'll have
+plenty of time to be dressed for the pageant. Hurry!”
+
+There was silence in Penrod's aerie.
+
+“PEN-rod!”
+
+Mrs. Schofields voice sounded nearer, indicating a threatened approach.
+Penrod bestirred himself: he blew out the lantern, and shouted
+plaintively:
+
+“Well, ain't I coming fast's I can?”
+
+“Do hurry,” returned the voice, withdrawing; and the kitchen door could
+be heard to close.
+
+Languidly, Penrod proceeded to set his house in order.
+
+Replacing his manuscript and pencil in the cigar-box, he carefully
+buried the box in the sawdust, put the lantern and oil-can back in the
+soap-box, adjusted the elevator for the reception of Duke, and, in no
+uncertain tone, invited the devoted animal to enter.
+
+Duke stretched himself amiably, affecting not to hear; and when this
+pretence became so obvious that even a dog could keep it up no longer,
+sat down in a corner, facing it, his back to his master, and his head
+perpendicular, nose upward, supported by the convergence of the two
+walls. This, from a dog, is the last word, the comble of the immutable.
+Penrod commanded, stormed, tried gentleness; persuaded with honeyed
+words and pictured rewards. Duke's eyes looked backward; otherwise
+he moved not. Time elapsed. Penrod stooped to flattery, finally to
+insincere caresses; then, losing patience spouted sudden threats.
+
+Duke remained immovable, frozen fast to his great gesture of implacable
+despair.
+
+A footstep sounded on the threshold of the store-room.
+
+“Penrod, come down from that box this instant!”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“Are you up in that sawdust-box again?” As Mrs. Schofield had just heard
+her son's voice issue from the box, and also, as she knew he was there
+anyhow, her question must have been put for oratorical purposes only.
+“Because if you are,” she continued promptly, “I'm going to ask your
+papa not to let you play there any----”
+
+Penrod's forehead, his eyes, the tops of his ears, and most of his hair,
+became visible to her at the top of the box. “I ain't 'playing!'” he
+said indignantly.
+
+“Well, what ARE you doing?”
+
+“Just coming down,” he replied, in a grieved but patient tone.
+
+“Then why don't you COME?”
+
+“I got Duke here. I got to get him DOWN, haven't I? You don't suppose I
+want to leave a poor dog in here to starve, do you?”
+
+“Well, hand him down over the side to me. Let me----”
+
+“I'll get him down all right,” said Penrod. “I got him up here, and I
+guess I can get him down!”
+
+“Well then, DO it!”
+
+“I will if you'll let me alone. If you'll go on back to the house I
+promise to be there inside of two minutes. Honest!”
+
+He put extreme urgency into this, and his mother turned toward the
+house. “If you're not there in two minutes----”
+
+“I will be!”
+
+After her departure, Penrod expended some finalities of eloquence upon
+Duke, then disgustedly gathered him up in his arms, dumped him into the
+basket and, shouting sternly, “All in for the ground floor--step back
+there, madam--all ready, Jim!” lowered dog and basket to the floor
+of the storeroom. Duke sprang out in tumultuous relief, and bestowed
+frantic affection upon his master as the latter slid down from the box.
+
+Penrod dusted himself sketchily, experiencing a sense of satisfaction,
+dulled by the overhanging afternoon, perhaps, but perceptible: he had
+the feeling of one who has been true to a cause. The operation of the
+elevator was unsinful and, save for the shock to Duke's nervous system,
+it was harmless; but Penrod could not possibly have brought himself to
+exhibit it in the presence of his mother or any other grown person in
+the world. The reasons for secrecy were undefined; at least, Penrod did
+not define them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III THE COSTUME
+
+After lunch his mother and his sister Margaret, a pretty girl of
+nineteen, dressed him for the sacrifice. They stood him near his
+mother's bedroom window and did what they would to him.
+
+During the earlier anguishes of the process he was mute, exceeding the
+pathos of the stricken calf in the shambles; but a student of eyes
+might have perceived in his soul the premonitory symptoms of a sinister
+uprising. At a rehearsal (in citizens' clothes) attended by mothers and
+grown-up sisters, Mrs. Lora Rewbush had announced that she wished the
+costuming to be “as medieval and artistic as possible.” Otherwise, and
+as to details, she said, she would leave the costumes entirely to the
+good taste of the children's parents. Mrs. Schofield and Margaret were
+no archeologists, but they knew that their taste was as good as that of
+other mothers and sisters concerned; so with perfect confidence they had
+planned and executed a costume for Penrod; and the only misgiving they
+felt was connected with the tractability of the Child Sir Lancelot
+himself.
+
+Stripped to his underwear, he had been made to wash himself vehemently;
+then they began by shrouding his legs in a pair of silk stockings, once
+blue but now mostly whitish. Upon Penrod they visibly surpassed mere
+ampleness; but they were long, and it required only a rather loose
+imagination to assume that they were tights.
+
+The upper part of his body was next concealed from view by a garment
+so peculiar that its description becomes difficult. In 1886, Mrs.
+Schofield, then unmarried, had worn at her “coming-out party” a dress of
+vivid salmon silk which had been remodelled after her marriage to accord
+with various epochs of fashion until a final, unskilful campaign at a
+dye-house had left it in a condition certain to attract much attention
+to the wearer. Mrs. Schofield had considered giving it to Della, the
+cook; but had decided not to do so, because you never could tell how
+Della was going to take things, and cooks were scarce.
+
+It may have been the word “medieval” (in Mrs. Lora Rewbush's rich
+phrase) which had inspired the idea for a last conspicuous usefulness;
+at all events, the bodice of that once salmon dress, somewhat modified
+and moderated, now took a position, for its farewell appearance in
+society, upon the back, breast, and arms of the Child Sir Lancelot.
+
+The area thus costumed ceased at the waist, leaving a Jaeger-like and
+unmedieval gap thence to the tops of the stockings. The inventive genius
+of woman triumphantly bridged it, but in a manner which imposes upon
+history almost insuperable delicacies of narration. Penrod's father
+was an old-fashioned man: the twentieth century had failed to shake his
+faith in red flannel for cold weather; and it was while Mrs. Schofield
+was putting away her husband's winter underwear that she perceived how
+hopelessly one of the elder specimens had dwindled; and simultaneously
+she received the inspiration which resulted in a pair of trunks for the
+Child Sir Lancelot, and added an earnest bit of colour, as well as a
+genuine touch of the Middle Ages, to his costume. Reversed, fore to aft,
+with the greater part of the legs cut off, and strips of silver braid
+covering the seams, this garment, she felt, was not traceable to its
+original source.
+
+When it had been placed upon Penrod, the stockings were attached to it
+by a system of safety-pins, not very perceptible at a distance. Next,
+after being severely warned against stooping, Penrod got his feet into
+the slippers he wore to dancing-school--“patent-leather pumps” now
+decorated with large pink rosettes.
+
+“If I can't stoop,” he began, smolderingly, “I'd like to know how'm I
+goin' to kneel in the pag----”
+
+“You must MANAGE!” This, uttered through pins, was evidently thought to
+be sufficient.
+
+They fastened some ruching about his slender neck, pinned ribbons at
+random all over him, and then Margaret thickly powdered his hair.
+
+“Oh, yes, that's all right,” she said, replying to a question put by her
+mother. “They always powdered their hair in Colonial times.”
+
+“It doesn't seem right to me--exactly,” objected Mrs. Schofield, gently.
+“Sir Lancelot must have been ever so long before Colonial times.”
+
+“That doesn't matter,” Margaret reassured her. “Nobody'll know the
+difference--Mrs. Lora Rewbush least of all. I don't think she knows a
+thing about it, though, of course, she does write splendidly and the
+words of the pageant are just beautiful. Stand still, Penrod!” (The
+author of “Harold Ramorez” had moved convulsively.) “Besides, powdered
+hair's always becoming. Look at him. You'd hardly know it was Penrod!”
+
+The pride and admiration with which she pronounced this undeniable truth
+might have been thought tactless, but Penrod, not analytical, found his
+spirits somewhat elevated. No mirror was in his range of vision and,
+though he had submitted to cursory measurements of his person a week
+earlier, he had no previous acquaintance with the costume. He began
+to form a not unpleasing mental picture of his appearance, something
+somewhere between the portraits of George Washington and a vivid memory
+of Miss Julia Marlowe at a matinee of “Twelfth Night.”
+
+He was additionally cheered by a sword which had been borrowed from a
+neighbor, who was a Knight of Pythias. Finally there was a mantle, an
+old golf cape of Margaret's. Fluffy polka-dots of white cotton had been
+sewed to it generously; also it was ornamented with a large cross of
+red flannel, suggested by the picture of a Crusader in a newspaper
+advertisement. The mantle was fastened to Penrod's shoulder (that is,
+to the shoulder of Mrs. Schofield's ex-bodice) by means of large
+safety-pins, and arranged to hang down behind him, touching his heels,
+but obscuring nowise the glory of his facade. Then, at last, he was
+allowed to step before a mirror.
+
+It was a full-length glass, and the worst immediately happened. It might
+have been a little less violent, perhaps, if Penrod's expectations had
+not been so richly and poetically idealized; but as things were, the
+revolt was volcanic.
+
+Victor Hugo's account of the fight with the devil-fish, in “Toilers
+of the Sea,” encourages a belief that, had Hugo lived and increased in
+power, he might have been equal to a proper recital of the half
+hour which followed Penrod's first sight of himself as the Child Sir
+Lancelot. But Mr. Wilson himself, dastard but eloquent foe of Harold
+Ramorez, could not have expressed, with all the vile dashes at
+his command, the sentiments which animated Penrod's bosom when the
+instantaneous and unalterable conviction descended upon him that he was
+intended by his loved ones to make a public spectacle of himself in his
+sister's stockings and part of an old dress of his mother's.
+
+To him these familiar things were not disguised at all; there seemed no
+possibility that the whole world would not know them at a glance. The
+stockings were worse than the bodice. He had been assured that these
+could not be recognized, but, seeing them in the mirror, he was sure
+that no human eye could fail at first glance to detect the difference
+between himself and the former purposes of these stockings. Fold,
+wrinkle, and void shrieked their history with a hundred tongues,
+invoking earthquake, eclipse, and blue ruin. The frantic youth's final
+submission was obtained only after a painful telephonic conversation
+between himself and his father, the latter having been called up and
+upon, by the exhausted Mrs. Schofield, to subjugate his offspring by
+wire.
+
+The two ladies made all possible haste, after this, to deliver
+Penrod into the hands of Mrs. Lora Rewbush; nevertheless, they found
+opportunity to exchange earnest congratulations upon his not having
+recognized the humble but serviceable paternal garment now brilliant
+about the Lancelotish middle. Altogether, they felt that the costume
+was a success. Penrod looked like nothing ever remotely imagined by
+Sir Thomas Malory or Alfred Tennyson;--for that matter, he looked like
+nothing ever before seen on earth; but as Mrs. Schofield and Margaret
+took their places in the audience at the Women's Arts and Guild Hall,
+the anxiety they felt concerning Penrod's elocutionary and gesticular
+powers, so soon to be put to public test, was pleasantly tempered by
+their satisfaction that, owing to their efforts, his outward appearance
+would be a credit to the family.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV DESPERATION
+
+The Child Sir Lancelot found himself in a large anteroom behind the
+stage--a room crowded with excited children, all about equally medieval
+and artistic. Penrod was less conspicuous than he thought himself, but
+he was so preoccupied with his own shame, steeling his nerves to meet
+the first inevitable taunting reference to his sister's stockings,
+that he failed to perceive there were others present in much of his own
+unmanned condition. Retiring to a corner, immediately upon his entrance,
+he managed to unfasten the mantle at the shoulders, and, drawing it
+round him, pinned it again at his throat so that it concealed the rest
+of his costume. This permitted a temporary relief, but increased his
+horror of the moment when, in pursuance of the action of the “pageant,”
+ the sheltering garment must be cast aside.
+
+Some of the other child knights were also keeping their mantles close
+about them. A few of the envied opulent swung brilliant fabrics
+from their shoulders, airily, showing off hired splendours from a
+professional costumer's stock, while one or two were insulting examples
+of parental indulgence, particularly little Maurice Levy, the Child Sir
+Galahad. This shrinking person went clamorously about, making it known
+everywhere that the best tailor in town had been dazzled by a great
+sum into constructing his costume. It consisted of blue velvet
+knickerbockers, a white satin waistcoat, and a beautifully cut little
+swallow-tailed coat with pearl buttons. The medieval and artistic
+triumph was completed by a mantle of yellow velvet, and little white
+boots, sporting gold tassels.
+
+All this radiance paused in a brilliant career and addressed the Child
+Sir Lancelot, gathering an immediately formed semicircular audience of
+little girls. Woman was ever the trailer of magnificence.
+
+“What YOU got on?” inquired Mr. Levy, after dispensing information.
+“What you got on under that ole golf cape?”
+
+Penrod looked upon him coldly. At other times his questioner would have
+approached him with deference, even with apprehension. But to-day the
+Child Sir Galahad was somewhat intoxicated with the power of his own
+beauty.
+
+“What YOU got on?” he repeated.
+
+“Oh, nothin',” said Penrod, with an indifference assumed at great cost
+to his nervous system.
+
+The elate Maurice was inspired to set up as a wit. “Then you're nakid!”
+ he shouted exultantly. “Penrod Schofield says he hasn't got nothin' on
+under that ole golf cape! He's nakid! He's nakid.”
+
+The indelicate little girls giggled delightedly, and a javelin pierced
+the inwards of Penrod when he saw that the Child Elaine, amber-curled
+and beautiful Marjorie Jones, lifted golden laughter to the horrid jest.
+
+Other boys and girls came flocking to the uproar. “He's nakid, he's
+nakid!” shrieked the Child Sir Galahad. “Penrod Schofield's nakid! He's
+NA-A-A-KID!”
+
+“Hush, hush!” said Mrs. Lora Rewbush, pushing her way into the group.
+“Remember, we are all little knights and ladies to-day. Little knights
+and ladies of the Table Round would not make so much noise. Now
+children, we must begin to take our places on the stage. Is everybody
+here?”
+
+Penrod made his escape under cover of this diversion: he slid behind
+Mrs. Lora Rewbush, and being near a door, opened it unnoticed and went
+out quickly, closing it behind him. He found himself in a narrow and
+vacant hallway which led to a door marked “Janitor's Room.”
+
+Burning with outrage, heart-sick at the sweet, cold-blooded laughter
+of Marjorie Jones, Penrod rested his elbows upon a window-sill and
+speculated upon the effects of a leap from the second story. One of the
+reasons he gave it up was his desire to live on Maurice Levy's account:
+already he was forming educational plans for the Child Sir Galahad.
+
+A stout man in blue overalls passed through the hallway muttering to
+himself petulantly. “I reckon they'll find that hall hot enough NOW!” he
+said, conveying to Penrod an impression that some too feminine women had
+sent him upon an unreasonable errand to the furnace. He went into the
+Janitor's Room and, emerging a moment later, minus the overalls, passed
+Penrod again with a bass rumble--“Dern 'em!” it seemed he said--and
+made a gloomy exit by the door at the upper end of the hallway.
+
+The conglomerate and delicate rustle of a large, mannerly audience was
+heard as the janitor opened and closed the door; and stage-fright
+seized the boy. The orchestra began an overture, and, at that, Penrod,
+trembling violently, tiptoed down the hall into the Janitor's Room. It
+was a cul-de-sac: There was no outlet save by the way he had come.
+
+Despairingly he doffed his mantle and looked down upon himself for
+a last sickening assurance that the stockings were as obviously and
+disgracefully Margaret's as they had seemed in the mirror at home. For a
+moment he was encouraged: perhaps he was no worse than some of the
+other boys. Then he noticed that a safety-pin had opened; one of those
+connecting the stockings with his trunks. He sat down to fasten it
+and his eye fell for the first time with particular attention upon the
+trunks. Until this instant he had been preoccupied with the stockings.
+
+Slowly recognition dawned in his eyes.
+
+The Schofields' house stood on a corner at the intersection of two
+main-travelled streets; the fence was low, and the publicity obtained by
+the washable portion of the family apparel, on Mondays, had often been
+painful to Penrod; for boys have a peculiar sensitiveness in these
+matters. A plain, matter-of-fact washerwoman' employed by Mrs.
+Schofield, never left anything to the imagination of the passer-by; and
+of all her calm display the scarlet flaunting of his father's winter
+wear had most abashed Penrod. One day Marjorie Jones, all gold and
+starch, had passed when the dreadful things were on the line: Penrod had
+hidden himself, shuddering. The whole town, he was convinced, knew these
+garments intimately and derisively.
+
+And now, as he sat in the janitor's chair, the horrible and paralyzing
+recognition came. He had not an instant's doubt that every fellow actor,
+as well as every soul in the audience, would recognize what his mother
+and sister had put upon him. For as the awful truth became plain to
+himself it seemed blazoned to the world; and far, far louder than the
+stockings, the trunks did fairly bellow the grisly secret: WHOSE they
+were and WHAT they were!
+
+Most people have suffered in a dream the experience of finding
+themselves very inadequately clad in the midst of a crowd of
+well-dressed people, and such dreamers' sensations are comparable to
+Penrod's, though faintly, because Penrod was awake and in much too full
+possession of the most active capacities for anguish.
+
+A human male whose dress has been damaged, or reveals some vital lack,
+suffers from a hideous and shameful loneliness which makes every
+second absolutely unbearable until he is again as others of his sex and
+species; and there is no act or sin whatever too desperate for him in
+his struggle to attain that condition. Also, there is absolutely no
+embarrassment possible to a woman which is comparable to that of a man
+under corresponding circumstances and in this a boy is a man. Gazing
+upon the ghastly trunks, the stricken Penrod felt that he was a degree
+worse then nude; and a great horror of himself filled his soul.
+
+“Penrod Schofield!”
+
+The door into the hallway opened, and a voice demanded him. He could not
+be seen from the hallway, but the hue and the cry was up; and he knew
+he must be taken. It was only a question of seconds. He huddled in his
+chair.
+
+“Penrod Schofield!” cried Mrs. Lora Rewbush angrily.
+
+The distracted boy rose and, as he did so, a long pin sank deep into his
+back. He extracted it frenziedly, which brought to his ears a protracted
+and sonorous ripping, too easily located by a final gesture of horror.
+
+“Penrod Schofield!” Mrs. Lora Rewbush had come out into the hallway.
+
+And now, in this extremity, when all seemed lost indeed, particularly
+including honour, the dilating eye of the outlaw fell upon the blue
+overalls which the janitor had left hanging upon a peg.
+
+Inspiration and action were almost simultaneous.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V THE PAGEANT OF THE TABLE ROUND
+
+
+“Penrod!” Mrs. Lora Rewbush stood in the doorway, indignantly gazing
+upon a Child Sir Lancelot mantled to the heels. “Do you know that you
+have kept an audience of five hundred people waiting for ten minutes?”
+ She, also, detained the five hundred while she spake further.
+
+“Well,” said Penrod contentedly, as he followed her toward the buzzing
+stage, “I was just sitting there thinking.”
+
+Two minutes later the curtain rose on a medieval castle hall richly done
+in the new stage-craft made in Germany and consisting of pink and blue
+cheesecloth. The Child King Arthur and the Child Queen Guinevere were
+disclosed upon thrones, with the Child Elaine and many other celebrities
+in attendance; while about fifteen Child Knights were seated at a
+dining-room table round, which was covered with a large Oriental rug,
+and displayed (for the knights' refreshment) a banquet service of silver
+loving-cups and trophies, borrowed from the Country Club and some local
+automobile manufacturers.
+
+In addition to this splendour, potted plants and palms have seldom been
+more lavishly used in any castle on the stage or off.
+
+The footlights were aided by a “spot-light” from the rear of the hall;
+and the children were revealed in a blaze of glory.
+
+A hushed, multitudinous “O-OH” of admiration came from the decorous and
+delighted audience. Then the children sang feebly:
+
+     “Chuldrun of the Tabul Round,
+     Lit-tul knights and ladies we.
+     Let our voy-siz all resound
+     Faith and hope and charitee!”
+
+The Child King Arthur rose, extended his sceptre with the decisive
+gesture of a semaphore, and spake:
+
+     “Each littul knight and lady born
+     Has noble deeds TO perform
+     In THEE child-world of shivullree,
+     No matter how small his share may be.
+     Let each advance and tell in turn
+     What claim has each to knighthood earn.”
+
+The Child Sir Mordred, the villain of this piece, rose in his place
+at the table round, and piped the only lines ever written by Mrs. Lora
+Rewbush which Penrod Schofield could have pronounced without loathing.
+Georgie Bassett, a really angelic boy, had been selected for the role of
+Mordred. His perfect conduct had earned for him the sardonic sobriquet,
+“The Little Gentleman,” among his boy acquaintances. (Naturally he had
+no friends.) Hence the other boys supposed that he had been selected for
+the wicked Mordred as a reward of virtue. He declaimed serenely:
+
+     “I hight Sir Mordred the Child, and I teach
+     Lessons of selfishest evil, and reach
+     Out into darkness.  Thoughtless, unkind,
+     And ruthless is Mordred, and unrefined.”
+
+The Child Mordred was properly rebuked and denied the accolade, though,
+like the others, he seemed to have assumed the title already. He made
+a plotter's exit. Whereupon Maurice Levy rose, bowed, announced that he
+highted the Child Sir Galahad, and continued with perfect sang-froid:
+
+     “I am the purest of the pure.
+     I have but kindest thoughts each day.
+     I give my riches to the poor,
+     And follow in the Master's way.”
+
+This elicited tokens of approval from the Child King Arthur, and he bade
+Maurice “stand forth” and come near the throne, a command obeyed with
+the easy grace of conscious merit.
+
+It was Penrod's turn. He stepped back from his chair, the table between
+him and the audience, and began in a high, breathless monotone:
+
+     “I hight Sir Lancelot du Lake, the Child,
+     Gentul-hearted, meek, and mild.
+     What though I'm BUT a littul child,
+     Gentul-heartud, meek, and mild,
+     I do my share though but--though but----”
+
+Penrod paused and gulped. The voice of Mrs. Lora Rewbush was heard from
+the wings, prompting irritably, and the Child. Sir Lancelot repeated:
+
+     “I do my share though but--though but a tot,
+     I pray you knight Sir Lancelot!”
+
+This also met the royal favour, and Penrod was bidden to join Sir
+Galahad at the throne. As he crossed the stage, Mrs. Schofield whispered
+to Margaret:
+
+“That boy! He's unpinned his mantle and fixed it to cover his whole
+costume. After we worked so hard to make it becoming!”
+
+“Never mind; he'll have to take the cape off in a minute,” returned
+Margaret. She leaned forward suddenly, narrowing her eyes to see
+better. “What IS that thing hanging about his left ankle?” she whispered
+uneasily. “How queer! He must have got tangled in something.”
+
+“Where?” asked Mrs. Schofield, in alarm.
+
+“His left foot. It makes him stumble. Don't you see? It looks--it looks
+like an elephant's foot!”
+
+The Child Sir Lancelot and the Child Sir Galahad clasped hands before
+their Child King. Penrod was conscious of a great uplift; in a moment he
+would have to throw aside his mantle, but even so he was protected and
+sheltered in the human garment of a man. His stage-fright had passed,
+for the audience was but an indistinguishable blur of darkness beyond
+the dazzling lights. His most repulsive speech (that in which he
+proclaimed himself a “tot”) was over and done with; and now at last the
+small, moist hand of the Child Sir Galahad lay within his own. Craftily
+his brown fingers stole from Maurice's palm to the wrist. The two boys
+declaimed in concert:
+
+     “We are two chuldrun of the Tabul Round
+     Strewing kindness all a-round.
+     With love and good deeds striving ever for the best,
+     May our littul efforts e'er be blest.
+     Two littul hearts we offer.  See
+     United in love, faith, hope, and char--OW!”
+
+The conclusion of the duet was marred. The Child Sir Galahad suddenly
+stiffened, and, uttering an irrepressible shriek of anguish, gave a
+brief exhibition of the contortionist's art. (“HE'S TWISTIN' MY WRIST!
+DERN YOU, LEGGO!”)
+
+The voice of Mrs. Lora Rewbush was again heard from the wings; it
+sounded bloodthirsty. Penrod released his victim; and the Child King
+Arthur, somewhat disconcerted, extended his sceptre and, with the
+assistance of the enraged prompter, said:
+
+     “Sweet child-friends of the Tabul Round,
+     In brotherly love and kindness abound,
+     Sir Lancelot, you have spoken well,
+     Sir Galahad, too, as clear as bell.
+     So now pray doff your mantles gay.
+     You shall be knighted this very day.”
+
+And Penrod doffed his mantle.
+
+Simultaneously, a thick and vasty gasp came from the audience, as
+from five hundred bathers in a wholly unexpected surf. This gasp was
+punctuated irregularly, over the auditorium, by imperfectly subdued
+screams both of dismay and incredulous joy, and by two dismal shrieks.
+Altogether it was an extraordinary sound, a sound never to be forgotten
+by any one who heard it. It was almost as unforgettable as the sight
+which caused it; the word “sight” being here used in its vernacular
+sense, for Penrod, standing unmantled and revealed in all the medieval
+and artistic glory of the janitor's blue overalls, falls within its
+meaning.
+
+The janitor was a heavy man, and his overalls, upon Penrod, were merely
+oceanic. The boy was at once swaddled and lost within their blue
+gulfs and vast saggings; and the left leg, too hastily rolled up, had
+descended with a distinctively elephantine effect, as Margaret had
+observed. Certainly, the Child Sir Lancelot was at least a sight.
+
+It is probable that a great many in that hall must have had, even then,
+a consciousness that they were looking on at History in the Making.
+A supreme act is recognizable at sight: it bears the birthmark of
+immortality. But Penrod, that marvellous boy, had begun to declaim, even
+with the gesture of flinging off his mantle for the accolade:
+
+     “I first, the Child Sir Lancelot du Lake,
+     Will volunteer to knighthood take,
+     And kneeling here before your throne
+     I vow to----”
+
+He finished his speech unheard. The audience had recovered breath, but
+had lost self-control, and there ensued something later described by a
+participant as a sort of cultured riot.
+
+The actors in the “pageant” were not so dumfounded by Penrod's costume
+as might have been expected. A few precocious geniuses perceived
+that the overalls were the Child Lancelot's own comment on maternal
+intentions; and these were profoundly impressed: they regarded him with
+the grisly admiration of young and ambitious criminals for a jail-mate
+about to be distinguished by hanging. But most of the children simply
+took it to be the case (a little strange, but not startling) that
+Penrod's mother had dressed him like that--which is pathetic. They tried
+to go on with the “pageant.”
+
+They made a brief, manful effort. But the irrepressible outbursts from
+the audience bewildered them; every time Sir Lancelot du Lake the Child
+opened his mouth, the great, shadowy house fell into an uproar, and the
+children into confusion. Strong women and brave girls in the audience
+went out into the lobby, shrieking and clinging to one another. Others
+remained, rocking in their seats, helpless and spent. The neighbourhood
+of Mrs. Schofield and Margaret became, tactfully, a desert. Friends of
+the author went behind the scenes and encountered a hitherto unknown
+phase of Mrs. Lora Rewbush; they said, afterward, that she hardly seemed
+to know what she was doing. She begged to be left alone somewhere with
+Penrod Schofield, for just a little while.
+
+They led her away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI EVENING
+
+The sun was setting behind the back fence (though at a considerable
+distance) as Penrod Schofield approached that fence and looked
+thoughtfully up at the top of it, apparently having in mind some purpose
+to climb up and sit there. Debating this, he passed his fingers gently
+up and down the backs of his legs; and then something seemed to decide
+him not to sit anywhere. He leaned against the fence, sighed profoundly,
+and gazed at Duke, his wistful dog.
+
+The sigh was reminiscent: episodes of simple pathos were passing before
+his inward eye. About the most painful was the vision of lovely
+Marjorie Jones, weeping with rage as the Child Sir Lancelot was dragged,
+insatiate, from the prostrate and howling Child Sir Galahad, after an
+onslaught delivered the precise instant the curtain began to fall upon
+the demoralized “pageant.” And then--oh, pangs! oh, woman!--she slapped
+at the ruffian's cheek, as he was led past her by a resentful janitor;
+and turning, flung her arms round the Child Sir Galahad's neck.
+
+“PENROD SCHOFIELD, DON'T YOU DARE EVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN AS LONG AS
+YOU LIVE!” Maurice's little white boots and gold tassels had done their
+work.
+
+At home the late Child Sir Lancelot was consigned to a locked
+clothes-closet pending the arrival of his father. Mr. Schofield came
+and, shortly after, there was put into practice an old patriarchal
+custom. It is a custom of inconceivable antiquity: probably primordial,
+certainly prehistoric, but still in vogue in some remaining citadels of
+the ancient simplicities of the Republic.
+
+And now, therefore, in the dusk, Penrod leaned against the fence and
+sighed.
+
+His case is comparable to that of an adult who could have survived a
+similar experience. Looking back to the sawdust-box, fancy pictures this
+comparable adult a serious and inventive writer engaged in congenial
+literary activities in a private retreat. We see this period marked
+by the creation of some of the most virile passages of a Work dealing
+exclusively in red corpuscles and huge primal impulses. We see
+this thoughtful man dragged from his calm seclusion to a horrifying
+publicity; forced to adopt the stage and, himself a writer, compelled
+to exploit the repulsive sentiments of an author not only personally
+distasteful to him but whose whole method and school in belles lettres
+he despises.
+
+We see him reduced by desperation and modesty to stealing a pair of
+overalls. We conceive him to have ruined, then, his own reputation,
+and to have utterly disgraced his family; next, to have engaged in
+the duello and to have been spurned by his lady-love, thus lost to him
+(according to her own declaration) forever. Finally, we must behold:
+imprisonment by the authorities; the third degree and flagellation.
+
+We conceive our man decided that his career had been perhaps too
+eventful. Yet Penrod had condensed all of it into eight hours.
+
+It appears that he had at least some shadowy perception of a recent
+fulness of life, for, as he leaned against the fence, gazing upon his
+wistful Duke, he sighed again and murmured aloud:
+
+“WELL, HASN'T THIS BEEN A DAY!”
+
+But in a little while a star came out, freshly lighted, from the highest
+part of the sky, and Penrod, looking up, noticed it casually and
+a little drowsily. He yawned. Then he sighed once more, but not
+reminiscently: evening had come; the day was over. It was a sigh of pure
+ennui.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII EVILS OF DRINK
+
+Next day, Penrod acquired a dime by a simple and antique process which
+was without doubt sometimes practised by the boys of Babylon. When the
+teacher of his class in Sunday-school requested the weekly contribution,
+Penrod, fumbling honestly (at first) in the wrong pockets, managed to
+look so embarrassed that the gentle lady told him not to mind, and said
+she was often forgetful herself. She was so sweet about it that, looking
+into the future, Penrod began to feel confident of a small but regular
+income.
+
+At the close of the afternoon services he did not go home, but proceeded
+to squander the funds just withheld from China upon an orgy of the most
+pungently forbidden description. In a Drug Emporium, near the church, he
+purchased a five-cent sack of candy consisting for the most part of the
+heavily flavoured hoofs of horned cattle, but undeniably substantial,
+and so generously capable of resisting solution that the purchaser must
+needs be avaricious beyond reason who did not realize his money's worth.
+
+Equipped with this collation, Penrod contributed his remaining nickel to
+a picture show, countenanced upon the seventh day by the legal but not
+the moral authorities. Here, in cozy darkness, he placidly insulted his
+liver with jaw-breaker upon jaw-breaker from the paper sack, and in a
+surfeit of content watched the silent actors on the screen.
+
+One film made a lasting impression upon him. It depicted with relentless
+pathos the drunkard's progress; beginning with his conversion to beer
+in the company of loose travelling men; pursuing him through an
+inexplicable lapse into evening clothes and the society of some
+remarkably painful ladies, next, exhibiting the effects of alcohol on
+the victim's domestic disposition, the unfortunate man was seen in the
+act of striking his wife and, subsequently, his pleading baby daughter
+with an abnormally heavy walking-stick. Their flight--through the
+snow--to seek the protection of a relative was shown, and finally, the
+drunkard's picturesque behaviour at the portals of a madhouse.
+
+So fascinated was Penrod that he postponed his departure until this film
+came round again, by which time he had finished his unnatural repast
+and almost, but not quite, decided against following the profession of a
+drunkard when he grew up.
+
+Emerging, satiated, from the theatre, a public timepiece before a
+jeweller's shop confronted him with an unexpected dial and imminent
+perplexities. How was he to explain at home these hours of dalliance?
+There was a steadfast rule that he return direct from Sunday-school; and
+Sunday rules were important, because on that day there was his father,
+always at home and at hand, perilously ready for action. One of the
+hardest conditions of boyhood is the almost continuous strain put upon
+the powers of invention by the constant and harassing necessity for
+explanations of every natural act.
+
+Proceeding homeward through the deepening twilight as rapidly as
+possible, at a gait half skip and half canter, Penrod made up his mind
+in what manner he would account for his long delay, and, as he drew
+nearer, rehearsed in words the opening passage of his defence.
+
+“Now see here,” he determined to begin; “I do not wished to be blamed
+for things I couldn't help, nor any other boy. I was going along the
+street by a cottage and a lady put her head out of the window and said
+her husband was drunk and whipping her and her little girl, and she
+asked me wouldn't I come in and help hold him. So I went in and tried to
+get hold of this drunken lady's husband where he was whipping their baby
+daughter, but he wouldn't pay any attention, and I TOLD her I ought to
+be getting home, but she kep' on askin' me to stay----”
+
+At this point he reached the corner of his own yard, where a coincidence
+not only checked the rehearsal of his eloquence but happily obviated all
+occasion for it. A cab from the station drew up in front of the gate,
+and there descended a troubled lady in black and a fragile little girl
+about three. Mrs. Schofield rushed from the house and enfolded both in
+hospitable arms.
+
+They were Penrod's Aunt Clara and cousin, also Clara, from Dayton,
+Illinois, and in the flurry of their arrival everybody forgot to put
+Penrod to the question. It is doubtful, however, if he felt any relief;
+there may have been even a slight, unconscious disappointment not
+altogether dissimilar to that of an actor deprived of a good part.
+
+In the course of some really necessary preparations for dinner he
+stepped from the bathroom into the pink-and-white bedchamber of his
+sister, and addressed her rather thickly through a towel.
+
+“When'd mamma find out Aunt Clara and Cousin Clara were coming?”
+
+“Not till she saw them from the window. She just happened to look out
+as they drove up. Aunt Clara telegraphed this morning, but it wasn't
+delivered.”
+
+“How long they goin' to stay?”
+
+“I don't know.”
+
+Penrod ceased to rub his shining face, and thoughtfully tossed the towel
+through the bathroom door. “Uncle John won't try to make 'em come
+back home, I guess, will he?” (Uncle John was Aunt Clara's husband, a
+successful manufacturer of stoves, and his lifelong regret was that he
+had not entered the Baptist ministry.) “He'll let 'em stay here quietly,
+won't he?”
+
+“What ARE you talking about?” demanded Margaret, turning from her
+mirror. “Uncle John sent them here. Why shouldn't he let them stay?”
+
+Penrod looked crestfallen. “Then he hasn't taken to drink?”
+
+“Certainly not!” She emphasized the denial with a pretty peal of soprano
+laughter.
+
+“Then why,” asked her brother gloomily, “why did Aunt Clara look so
+worried when she got here?”
+
+“Good gracious! Don't people worry about anything except somebody's
+drinking? Where did you get such an idea?”
+
+“Well,” he persisted, “you don't KNOW it ain't that.”
+
+She laughed again, wholeheartedly. “Poor Uncle John! He won't even allow
+grape juice or ginger ale in his house. They came because they were
+afraid little Clara might catch the measles. She's very delicate, and
+there's such an epidemic of measles among the children over in Dayton
+the schools had to be closed. Uncle John got so worried that last night
+he dreamed about it; and this morning he couldn't stand it any longer
+and packed them off over here, though he thinks its wicked to travel
+on Sunday. And Aunt Clara was worried when she got here because they'd
+forgotten to check her trunk and it will have to be sent by express. Now
+what in the name of the common sense put it into your head that Uncle
+John had taken to----”
+
+“Oh, nothing.” He turned lifelessly away and went downstairs, a new-born
+hope dying in his bosom. Life seems so needlessly dull sometimes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII SCHOOL
+
+Next morning, when he had once more resumed the dreadful burden of
+education, it seemed infinitely duller. And yet what pleasanter sight
+is there than a schoolroom well filled with children of those sprouting
+years just before the 'teens? The casual visitor, gazing from the
+teacher's platform upon these busy little heads, needs only a blunted
+memory to experience the most agreeable and exhilarating sensations.
+Still, for the greater part, the children are unconscious of the
+happiness of their condition; for nothing is more pathetically true than
+that we “never know when we are well off.” The boys in a public school
+are less aware of their happy state than are the girls; and of all the
+boys in his room, probably Penrod himself had the least appreciation of
+his felicity.
+
+He sat staring at an open page of a textbook, but not studying; not even
+reading; not even thinking. Nor was he lost in a reverie: his mind's eye
+was shut, as his physical eye might well have been, for the optic nerve,
+flaccid with ennui, conveyed nothing whatever of the printed page
+upon which the orb of vision was partially focused. Penrod was doing
+something very unusual and rare, something almost never accomplished
+except by coloured people or by a boy in school on a spring day: he was
+doing really nothing at all. He was merely a state of being.
+
+From the street a sound stole in through the open window, and abhorring
+Nature began to fill the vacuum called Penrod Schofield; for the sound
+was the spring song of a mouth-organ, coming down the sidewalk. The
+windows were intentionally above the level of the eyes of the seated
+pupils; but the picture of the musician was plain to Penrod, painted for
+him by a quality in the runs and trills, partaking of the oboe, of the
+calliope, and of cats in anguish; an excruciating sweetness obtained
+only by the wallowing, walloping yellow-pink palm of a hand whose back
+was Congo black and shiny. The music came down the street and passed
+beneath the window, accompanied by the care-free shuffling of a pair of
+old shoes scuffing syncopations on the cement sidewalk. It passed into
+the distance; became faint and blurred; was gone. Emotion stirred in
+Penrod a great and poignant desire, but (perhaps fortunately) no fairy
+godmother made her appearance.
+
+Otherwise Penrod would have gone down the street in a black skin,
+playing the mouth-organ, and an unprepared coloured youth would have
+found himself enjoying educational advantages for which he had no
+ambition whatever.
+
+Roused from perfect apathy, the boy cast about the schoolroom an eye
+wearied to nausea by the perpetual vision of the neat teacher upon the
+platform, the backs of the heads of the pupils in front of him, and the
+monotonous stretches of blackboard threateningly defaced by arithmetical
+formulae and other insignia of torture. Above the blackboard, the
+walls of the high room were of white plaster--white with the qualified
+whiteness of old snow in a soft coal town. This dismal expanse was
+broken by four lithographic portraits, votive offerings of a thoughtful
+publisher. The portraits were of good and great men, kind men; men
+who loved children. Their faces were noble and benevolent. But the
+lithographs offered the only rest for the eyes of children fatigued by
+the everlasting sameness of the schoolroom. Long day after long day,
+interminable week in and interminable week out, vast month on vast
+month, the pupils sat with those four portraits beaming kindness down
+upon them. The faces became permanent in the consciousness of the
+children; they became an obsession--in and out of school the children
+were never free of them. The four faces haunted the minds of children
+falling asleep; they hung upon the minds of children waking at night;
+they rose forebodingly in the minds of children waking in the morning;
+they became monstrously alive in the minds of children lying sick of
+fever. Never, while the children of that schoolroom lived, would they
+be able to forget one detail of the four lithographs: the hand of
+Longfellow was fixed, for them, forever, in his beard. And by a simple
+and unconscious association of ideas, Penrod Schofield was accumulating
+an antipathy for the gentle Longfellow and for James Russell Lowell and
+for Oliver Wendell Holmes and for John Greenleaf Whittier, which would
+never permit him to peruse a work of one of those great New Englanders
+without a feeling of personal resentment.
+
+His eyes fell slowly and inimically from the brow of Whittier to
+the braid of reddish hair belonging to Victorine Riordan, the little
+octoroon girl who sat directly in front of him. Victorine's back was as
+familiar to Penrod as the necktie of Oliver Wendell Holmes. So was her
+gayly coloured plaid waist. He hated the waist as he hated Victorine
+herself, without knowing why. Enforced companionship in large quantities
+and on an equal basis between the sexes appears to sterilize the
+affections, and schoolroom romances are few.
+
+Victorine's hair was thick, and the brickish glints in it were
+beautiful, but Penrod was very tired of it. A tiny knot of green ribbon
+finished off the braid and kept it from unravelling; and beneath the
+ribbon there was a final wisp of hair which was just long enough to
+repose upon Penrod's desk when Victorine leaned back in her seat. It was
+there now. Thoughtfully, he took the braid between thumb and forefinger,
+and, without disturbing Victorine, dipped the end of it and the green
+ribbon into the inkwell of his desk. He brought hair and ribbon forth
+dripping purple ink, and partially dried them on a blotter, though, a
+moment later when Victorine leaned forward, they were still able to add
+a few picturesque touches to the plaid waist.
+
+Rudolph Krauss, across the aisle from Penrod, watched the operation with
+protuberant eyes, fascinated. Inspired to imitation, he took a piece of
+chalk from his pocket and wrote “RATS” across the shoulder-blades of the
+boy in front of him, then looked across appealingly to Penrod for tokens
+of congratulation. Penrod yawned. It may not be denied that at times he
+appeared to be a very self-centred boy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX SOARING
+
+Half the members of the class passed out to a recitation-room, the
+empurpled Victorine among them, and Miss Spence started the remaining
+half through the ordeal of trial by mathematics. Several boys and girls
+were sent to the blackboard, and Penrod, spared for the moment, followed
+their operations a little while with his eyes, but not with his mind;
+then, sinking deeper in his seat, limply abandoned the effort. His eyes
+remained open, but saw nothing; the routine of the arithmetic lesson
+reached his ears in familiar, meaningless sounds, but he heard nothing;
+and yet, this time, he was profoundly occupied. He had drifted away from
+the painful land of facts, and floated now in a new sea of fancy which
+he had just discovered.
+
+Maturity forgets the marvellous realness of a boy's day-dreams, how
+colourful they glow, rosy and living, and how opaque the curtain closing
+down between the dreamer and the actual world. That curtain is almost
+sound-proof, too, and causes more throat-trouble among parents than is
+suspected.
+
+The nervous monotony of the schoolroom inspires a sometimes unbearable
+longing for something astonishing to happen, and as every boy's
+fundamental desire is to do something astonishing himself, so as to be
+the centre of all human interest and awe, it was natural that Penrod
+should discover in fancy the delightful secret of self-levitation.
+He found, in this curious series of imaginings, during the lesson in
+arithmetic, that the atmosphere may be navigated as by a swimmer under
+water, but with infinitely greater ease and with perfect comfort in
+breathing. In his mind he extended his arms gracefully, at a level with
+his shoulders, and delicately paddled the air with his hands, which at
+once caused him to be drawn up out of his seat and elevated gently to a
+position about midway between the floor and the ceiling, where he
+came to an equilibrium and floated; a sensation not the less exquisite
+because of the screams of his fellow pupils, appalled by the miracle.
+Miss Spence herself was amazed and frightened, but he only smiled down
+carelessly upon her when she commanded him to return to earth; and
+then, when she climbed upon a desk to pull him down, he quietly paddled
+himself a little higher, leaving his toes just out of her reach. Next,
+he swam through a few slow somersaults to show his mastery of the new
+art, and, with the shouting of the dumfounded scholars ringing in
+his ears, turned on his side and floated swiftly out of the window,
+immediately rising above the housetops, while people in the street below
+him shrieked, and a trolley car stopped dead in wonder.
+
+With almost no exertion he paddled himself, many yards at a stroke, to
+the girls' private school where Marjorie Jones was a pupil--Marjorie
+Jones of the amber curls and the golden voice! Long before the “Pageant
+of the Table Round,” she had offered Penrod a hundred proofs that
+she considered him wholly undesirable and ineligible. At the Friday
+Afternoon Dancing Class she consistently incited and led the laughter at
+him whenever Professor Bartet singled him out for admonition in matters
+of feet and decorum. And but yesterday she had chid him for his
+slavish lack of memory in daring to offer her a greeting on the way to
+Sunday-school. “Well! I expect you must forgot I told you never to speak
+to me again! If I was a boy, I'd be too proud to come hanging around
+people that don't speak to me, even if I WAS the Worst Boy in Town!”
+ So she flouted him. But now, as he floated in through the window of her
+classroom and swam gently along the ceiling like an escaped toy balloon,
+she fell upon her knees beside her little desk, and, lifting up her arms
+toward him, cried with love and admiration:
+
+“Oh, PENrod!”
+
+He negligently kicked a globe from the high chandelier, and, smiling
+coldly, floated out through the hall to the front steps of the school,
+while Marjorie followed, imploring him to grant her one kind look.
+
+In the street an enormous crowd had gathered, headed by Miss Spence and
+a brass band; and a cheer from a hundred thousand throats shook the
+very ground as Penrod swam overhead. Marjorie knelt upon the steps
+and watched adoringly while Penrod took the drum-major's baton and,
+performing sinuous evolutions above the crowd, led the band. Then he
+threw the baton so high that it disappeared from sight; but he went
+swiftly after it, a double delight, for he had not only the delicious
+sensation of rocketing safely up and up into the blue sky, but also
+that of standing in the crowd below, watching and admiring himself as he
+dwindled to a speck, disappeared and then, emerging from a cloud, came
+speeding down, with the baton in his hand, to the level of the treetops,
+where he beat time for the band and the vast throng and Marjorie Jones,
+who all united in the “Star-spangled Banner” in honour of his aerial
+achievements. It was a great moment.
+
+It was a great moment, but something seemed to threaten it. The face
+of Miss Spence looking up from the crowd grew too vivid--unpleasantly
+vivid. She was beckoning him and shouting, “Come down, Penrod Schofield!
+Penrod Schofield, come down here!”
+
+He could hear her above the band and the singing of the multitude; she
+seemed intent on spoiling everything. Marjorie Jones was weeping to
+show how sorry she was that she had formerly slighted him, and throwing
+kisses to prove that she loved him; but Miss Spence kept jumping between
+him and Marjorie, incessantly calling his name.
+
+He grew more and more irritated with her; he was the most important
+person in the world and was engaged in proving it to Marjorie Jones and
+the whole city, and yet Miss Spence seemed to feel she still had the
+right to order him about as she did in the old days when he was an
+ordinary schoolboy. He was furious; he was sure she wanted him to do
+something disagreeable. It seemed to him that she had screamed “Penrod
+Schofield!” thousands of times.
+
+From the beginning of his aerial experiments in his own schoolroom, he
+had not opened his lips, knowing somehow that one of the requirements
+for air floating is perfect silence on the part of the floater; but,
+finally, irritated beyond measure by Miss Spence's clamorous insistence,
+he was unable to restrain an indignant rebuke and immediately came to
+earth with a frightful bump.
+
+Miss Spence--in the flesh--had directed toward the physical body of the
+absent Penrod an inquiry as to the fractional consequences of dividing
+seventeen apples, fairly, among three boys, and she was surprised and
+displeased to receive no answer although to the best of her knowledge
+and belief, he was looking fixedly at her. She repeated her question
+crisply, without visible effect; then summoned him by name with
+increasing asperity. Twice she called him, while all his fellow
+pupils turned to stare at the gazing boy. She advanced a step from the
+platform.
+
+“Penrod Schofield!”
+
+“Oh, my goodness!” he shouted suddenly. “Can't you keep still a MINUTE?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X UNCLE JOHN
+
+Miss Spence gasped. So did the pupils.
+
+The whole room filled with a swelling conglomerate “O-O-O-O-H!”
+
+As for Penrod himself, the walls reeled with the shock. He sat with his
+mouth open, a mere lump of stupefaction. For the appalling words that
+he had hurled at the teacher were as inexplicable to him as to any other
+who heard them.
+
+Nothing is more treacherous than the human mind; nothing else so loves
+to play the Iscariot. Even when patiently bullied into a semblance of
+order and training, it may prove but a base and shifty servant. And
+Penrod's mind was not his servant; it was a master, with the April
+wind's whims; and it had just played him a diabolical trick. The very
+jolt with which he came back to the schoolroom in the midst of his
+fancied flight jarred his day-dream utterly out of him; and he sat,
+open-mouthed in horror at what he had said.
+
+The unanimous gasp of awe was protracted. Miss Spence, however, finally
+recovered her breath, and, returning deliberately to the platform, faced
+the school. “And then for a little while,” as pathetic stories sometimes
+recount, “everything was very still.” It was so still, in fact, that
+Penrod's newborn notoriety could almost be heard growing. This grisly
+silence was at last broken by the teacher.
+
+“Penrod Schofield, stand up!”
+
+The miserable child obeyed.
+
+“What did you mean by speaking to me in that way?”
+
+He hung his head, raked the floor with the side of his shoe, swayed,
+swallowed, looked suddenly at his hands with the air of never having
+seen them before, then clasped them behind him. The school shivered in
+ecstatic horror, every fascinated eye upon him; yet there was not a
+soul in the room but was profoundly grateful to him for the
+sensation--including the offended teacher herself. Unhappily, all this
+gratitude was unconscious and altogether different from the kind which,
+results in testimonials and loving-cups. On the contrary!
+
+“Penrod Schofield!”
+
+He gulped.
+
+“Answer me at once! Why did you speak to me like that?”
+
+“I was----” He choked, unable to continue.
+
+“Speak out!”
+
+“I was just--thinking,” he managed to stammer.
+
+“That will not do,” she returned sharply. “I wish to know immediately
+why you spoke as you did.”
+
+The stricken Penrod answered helplessly:
+
+“Because I was just thinking.”
+
+Upon the very rack he could have offered no ampler truthful explanation.
+It was all he knew about it.
+
+“Thinking what?”
+
+“Just thinking.”
+
+Miss Spence's expression gave evidence that her power of self-restraint
+was undergoing a remarkable test. However, after taking counsel with
+herself, she commanded:
+
+“Come here!”
+
+He shuffled forward, and she placed a chair upon the platform near her
+own.
+
+“Sit there!”
+
+Then (but not at all as if nothing had happened), she continued the
+lesson in arithmetic. Spiritually the children may have learned a lesson
+in very small fractions indeed as they gazed at the fragment of
+sin before them on the stool of penitence. They all stared at him
+attentively with hard and passionately interested eyes, in which there
+was never one trace of pity. It cannot be said with precision that he
+writhed; his movement was more a slow, continuous squirm, effected with
+a ghastly assumption of languid indifference; while his gaze, in the
+effort to escape the marble-hearted glare of his schoolmates, affixed
+itself with apparent permanence to the waistcoat button of James Russell
+Lowell just above the “U” in “Russell.”
+
+Classes came and classes went, grilling him with eyes. Newcomers
+received the story of the crime in darkling whispers; and the outcast
+sat and sat and sat, and squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. (He did one
+or two things with his spine which a professional contortionist would
+have observed with real interest.) And all this while of freezing
+suspense was but the criminal's detention awaiting trial. A known
+punishment may be anticipated with some measure of equanimity; at least,
+the prisoner may prepare himself to undergo it; but the unknown looms
+more monstrous for every attempt to guess it. Penrod's crime was unique;
+there were no rules to aid him in estimating the vengeance to fall upon
+him for it. What seemed most probable was that he would be expelled from
+the schools in the presence of his family, the mayor, and council, and
+afterward whipped by his father upon the State House steps, with the
+entire city as audience by invitation of the authorities.
+
+Noon came. The rows of children filed out, every head turning for a last
+unpleasingly speculative look at the outlaw. Then Miss Spence closed the
+door into the cloakroom and that into the big hall, and came and sat at
+her desk, near Penrod. The tramping of feet outside, the shrill calls
+and shouting and the changing voices of the older boys ceased to be
+heard--and there was silence. Penrod, still affecting to be occupied
+with Lowell, was conscious that Miss Spence looked at him intently.
+
+“Penrod,” she said gravely, “what excuse have you to offer before I
+report your case to the principal?”
+
+The word “principal” struck him to the vitals. Grand Inquisitor, Grand
+Khan, Sultan, Emperor, Tsar, Caesar Augustus--these are comparable. He
+stopped squirming instantly, and sat rigid.
+
+“I want an answer. Why did you shout those words at me?”
+
+“Well,” he murmured, “I was just--thinking.”
+
+“Thinking what?” she asked sharply.
+
+“I don't know.”
+
+“That won't do!”
+
+He took his left ankle in his right hand and regarded it helplessly.
+
+“That won't do, Penrod Schofield,” she repeated severely. “If that is
+all the excuse you have to offer I shall report your case this instant!”
+
+And she rose with fatal intent.
+
+But Penrod was one of those whom the precipice inspires. “Well, I HAVE
+got an excuse.”
+
+“Well”--she paused impatiently--“what is it?”
+
+He had not an idea, but he felt one coming, and replied automatically,
+in a plaintive tone:
+
+“I guess anybody that had been through what I had to go through, last
+night, would think they had an excuse.”
+
+Miss Spence resumed her seat, though with the air of being ready to leap
+from it instantly.
+
+“What has last night to do with your insolence to me this morning?”
+
+“Well, I guess you'd see,” he returned, emphasizing the plaintive note,
+“if you knew what I know.”
+
+“Now, Penrod,” she said, in a kinder voice, “I have a high regard for
+your mother and father, and it would hurt me to distress them, but you
+must either tell me what was the matter with you or I'll have to take
+you to Mrs. Houston.”
+
+“Well, ain't I going to?” he cried, spurred by the dread name. “It's
+because I didn't sleep last night.”
+
+“Were you ill?” The question was put with some dryness.
+
+He felt the dryness. “No'm; _I_ wasn't.”
+
+“Then if someone in your family was so ill that even you were kept up
+all night, how does it happen they let you come to school this morning?”
+
+“It wasn't illness,” he returned, shaking his head mournfully. “It was
+lots worse'n anybody's being sick. It was--it was--well, it was jest
+awful.”
+
+“WHAT was?” He remarked with anxiety the incredulity in her tone.
+
+“It was about Aunt Clara,” he said.
+
+“Your Aunt Clara!” she repeated. “Do you mean your mother's sister who
+married Mr. Farry of Dayton, Illinois?”
+
+“Yes--Uncle John,” returned Penrod sorrowfully. “The trouble was about
+him.”
+
+Miss Spence frowned a frown which he rightly interpreted as one of
+continued suspicion. “She and I were in school together,” she said. “I
+used to know her very well, and I've always heard her married life was
+entirely happy. I don't----”
+
+“Yes, it was,” he interrupted, “until last year when Uncle John took to
+running with travelling men----”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Yes'm.” He nodded solemnly. “That was what started it. At first he was
+a good, kind husband, but these travelling men would coax him into a
+saloon on his way home from work, and they got him to drinking beer and
+then ales, wines, liquors, and cigars----”
+
+“Penrod!”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“I'm not inquiring into your Aunt Clara's private affairs; I'm asking
+you if you have anything to say which would palliate----”
+
+“That's what I'm tryin' to TELL you about, Miss Spence,” he
+pleaded,--“if you'd jest only let me. When Aunt Clara and her little
+baby daughter got to our house last night----”
+
+“You say Mrs. Farry is visiting your mother?”
+
+“Yes'm--not just visiting--you see, she HAD to come. Well of course,
+little baby Clara, she was so bruised up and mauled, where he'd been
+hittin' her with his cane----”
+
+“You mean that your uncle had done such a thing as THAT!” exclaimed Miss
+Spence, suddenly disarmed by this scandal.
+
+“Yes'm, and mamma and Margaret had to sit up all night nursin' little
+Clara--and AUNT Clara was in such a state SOMEBODY had to keep talkin'
+to HER, and there wasn't anybody but me to do it, so I----”
+
+“But where was your father?” she cried.
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“Where was your father while----”
+
+“Oh--papa?” Penrod paused, reflected; then brightened. “Why, he was down
+at the train, waitin' to see if Uncle John would try to follow 'em and
+make 'em come home so's he could persecute 'em some more. I wanted to do
+that, but they said if he did come I mightn't be strong enough to
+hold him and----” The brave lad paused again, modestly. Miss Spence's
+expression was encouraging. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, and
+there may have been in them, also, the mingled beginnings of admiration
+and self-reproach. Penrod, warming to his work, felt safer every moment.
+
+“And so,” he continued, “I had to sit up with Aunt Clara. She had some
+pretty big bruises, too, and I had to----”
+
+“But why didn't they send for a doctor?” However, this question was only
+a flicker of dying incredulity.
+
+“Oh, they didn't want any DOCTOR,” exclaimed the inspired realist
+promptly. “They don't want anybody to HEAR about it because Uncle John
+might reform--and then where'd he be if everybody knew he'd been a
+drunkard and whipped his wife and baby daughter?”
+
+“Oh!” said Miss Spence.
+
+“You see, he used to be upright as anybody,” he went on explanatively.
+“It all begun----”
+
+“Began, Penrod.”
+
+“Yes'm. It all commenced from the first day he let those travelling men
+coax him into the saloon.” Penrod narrated the downfall of his Uncle
+John at length. In detail he was nothing short of plethoric; and
+incident followed incident, sketched with such vividness, such abundance
+of colour, and such verisimilitude to a drunkard's life as a drunkard's
+life should be, that had Miss Spence possessed the rather chilling
+attributes of William J. Burns himself, the last trace of skepticism
+must have vanished from her mind. Besides, there are two things that
+will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has
+taken to drink. And in every sense it was a moving picture which, with
+simple but eloquent words, the virtuous Penrod set before his teacher.
+
+His eloquence increased with what it fed on; and as with the eloquence
+so with self-reproach in the gentle bosom of the teacher. She cleared
+her throat with difficulty once or twice, during his description of his
+ministering night with Aunt Clara. “And I said to her, 'Why, Aunt Clara,
+what's the use of takin' on so about it?' And I said, 'Now, Aunt Clara,
+all the crying in the world can't make things any better.' And then
+she'd just keep catchin' hold of me, and sob and kind of holler, and I'd
+say, 'DON'T cry, Aunt Clara--PLEASE don't cry.”'
+
+Then, under the influence of some fragmentary survivals of the
+respectable portion of his Sunday adventures, his theme became more
+exalted; and, only partially misquoting a phrase from a psalm, he
+related how he had made it of comfort to Aunt Clara, and how he had
+besought her to seek Higher guidance in her trouble.
+
+The surprising thing about a structure such as Penrod was erecting is
+that the taller it becomes the more ornamentation it will stand. Gifted
+boys have this faculty of building magnificence upon cobwebs--and Penrod
+was gifted. Under the spell of his really great performance, Miss Spence
+gazed more and more sweetly upon the prodigy of spiritual beauty and
+goodness before her, until at last, when Penrod came to the explanation
+of his “just thinking,” she was forced to turn her head away.
+
+“You mean, dear,” she said gently, “that you were all worn out and
+hardly knew what you were saying?”
+
+“Yes'm.”
+
+“And you were thinking about all those dreadful things so hard that you
+forgot where you were?”
+
+“I was thinking,” he said simply, “how to save Uncle John.”
+
+And the end of it for this mighty boy was that the teacher kissed him!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI FIDELITY OF A LITTLE DOG
+
+The returning students, that afternoon, observed that Penrod's desk was
+vacant--and nothing could have been more impressive than that sinister
+mere emptiness. The accepted theory was that Penrod had been arrested.
+How breathtaking, then, the sensation when, at the beginning of the
+second hour, he strolled--in with inimitable carelessness and, rubbing
+his eyes, somewhat noticeably in the manner of one who has snatched an
+hour of much needed sleep, took his place as if nothing in particular
+had happened. This, at first supposed to be a superhuman exhibition
+of sheer audacity, became but the more dumfounding when Miss
+Spence--looking up from her desk--greeted him with a pleasant little
+nod. Even after school, Penrod gave numerous maddened investigators no
+relief. All he would consent to say was:
+
+“Oh, I just TALKED to her.”
+
+A mystification not entirely unconnected with the one thus produced was
+manifested at his own family dinner-table the following evening. Aunt
+Clara had been out rather late, and came to the table after the rest
+were seated. She wore a puzzled expression.
+
+“Do you ever see Mary Spence nowadays?” she inquired, as she unfolded
+her napkin, addressing Mrs. Schofield. Penrod abruptly set down his
+soup-spoon and gazed at his aunt with flattering attention.
+
+“Yes; sometimes,” said Mrs. Schofield. “She's Penrod's teacher.”
+
+“Is she?” said Mrs. Farry. “Do you--” She paused. “Do people think her a
+little--queer, these days?”
+
+“Why, no,” returned her sister. “What makes you say that?”
+
+“She has acquired a very odd manner,” said Mrs. Farry decidedly. “At
+least, she seemed odd to ME. I met her at the corner just before I got
+to the house, a few minutes ago, and after we'd said howdy-do to each
+other, she kept hold of my hand and looked as though she was going to
+cry. She seemed to be trying to say something, and choking----”
+
+“But I don't think that's so very queer, Clara. She knew you in school,
+didn't she?”
+
+“Yes, but----”
+
+“And she hadn't seen you for so many years, I think it's perfectly
+natural she----”
+
+“Wait! She stood there squeezing my hand, and struggling to get her
+voice--and I got really embarrassed--and then finally she said, in a
+kind of tearful whisper, 'Be of good cheer--this trial will pass!'”
+
+“How queer!” exclaimed Margaret.
+
+Penrod sighed, and returned somewhat absently to his soup.
+
+“Well, I don't know,” said Mrs. Schofield thoughtfully. “Of course she's
+heard about the outbreak of measles in Dayton, since they had to close
+the schools, and she knows you live there----”
+
+“But doesn't it seem a VERY exaggerated way,” suggested Margaret, “to
+talk about measles?”
+
+“Wait!” begged Aunt Clara. “After she said that, she said something even
+queerer, and then put her handkerchief to her eyes and hurried away.”
+
+Penrod laid down his spoon again and moved his chair slightly back from
+the table. A spirit of prophecy was upon him: he knew that someone was
+going to ask a question which he felt might better remain unspoken.
+
+“What WAS the other thing she said?” Mr. Schofield inquired, thus
+immediately fulfilling his son's premonition.
+
+“She said,” returned Mrs. Farry slowly, looking about the table, “she
+said, 'I know that Penrod is a great, great comfort to you!'”
+
+There was a general exclamation of surprise. It was a singular thing,
+and in no manner may it be considered complimentary to Penrod, that this
+speech of Miss Spence's should have immediately confirmed Mrs. Farry's
+doubts about her in the minds of all his family.
+
+Mr. Schofield shook his head pityingly.
+
+“I'm afraid she's a goner,” he went so far as to say.
+
+“Of all the weird ideas!” cried Margaret.
+
+“I never heard anything like it in my life!” Mrs. Schofield exclaimed.
+“Was that ALL she said?”
+
+“Every word!”
+
+Penrod again resumed attention to his soup. His mother looked at him
+curiously, and then, struck by a sudden thought, gathered the glances of
+the adults of the table by a significant movement of the head, and, by
+another, conveyed an admonition to drop the subject until later. Miss
+Spence was Penrod's teacher: it was better, for many reasons, not
+to discuss the subject of her queerness before him. This was Mrs.
+Schofield's thought at the time. Later she had another, and it kept her
+awake.
+
+The next afternoon, Mr. Schofield, returning at five o'clock from the
+cares of the day, found the house deserted, and sat down to read his
+evening paper in what appeared to be an uninhabited apartment known to
+its own world as the “drawing-room.” A sneeze, unexpected both to him
+and the owner, informed him of the presence of another person.
+
+“Where are you, Penrod?” the parent asked, looking about.
+
+“Here,” said Penrod meekly.
+
+Stooping, Mr. Schofield discovered his son squatting under the piano,
+near an open window--his wistful Duke lying beside him.
+
+“What are you doing there?”
+
+“Me?”
+
+“Why under the piano?”
+
+“Well,” the boy returned, with grave sweetness, “I was just kind of
+sitting here--thinking.”
+
+“All right.” Mr. Schofield, rather touched, returned to the digestion of
+a murder, his back once more to the piano; and Penrod silently drew
+from beneath his jacket (where he had slipped it simultaneously with
+the sneeze) a paper-backed volume entitled: “Slimsy, the Sioux City
+Squealer, or, 'Not Guilty, Your Honor.'”
+
+In this manner the reading-club continued in peace, absorbed, contented,
+the world well forgot--until a sudden, violently irritated slam-bang of
+the front door startled the members; and Mrs. Schofield burst into the
+room and threw herself into a chair, moaning.
+
+“What's the matter, mamma?” asked her husband laying aside his paper.
+
+“Henry Passloe Schofield,” returned the lady, “I don't know what IS to
+be done with that boy; I do NOT!”
+
+“You mean Penrod?”
+
+“Who else could I mean?” She sat up, exasperated, to stare at him.
+“Henry Passloe Schofield, you've got to take this matter in your
+hands--it's beyond me!”
+
+“Well, what has he----”
+
+“Last night I got to thinking,” she began rapidly, “about what Clara
+told us--thank Heaven she and Margaret and little Clara have gone to tea
+at Cousin Charlotte's!--but they'll be home soon--about what she said
+about Miss Spence----”
+
+“You mean about Penrod's being a comfort?”
+
+“Yes, and I kept thinking and thinking and thinking about it till I
+couldn't stand it any----”
+
+“By GEORGE!” shouted Mr. Schofield startlingly, stooping to look
+under the piano. A statement that he had suddenly remembered his son's
+presence would be lacking in accuracy, for the highly sensitized Penrod
+was, in fact, no longer present. No more was Duke, his faithful dog.
+
+“What's the matter?”
+
+“Nothing,” he returned, striding to the open window and looking out. “Go
+on.”
+
+“Oh,” she moaned, “it must be kept from Clara--and I'll never hold up my
+head again if John Farry ever hears of it!”
+
+“Hears of WHAT?”
+
+“Well, I just couldn't stand it, I got so curious; and I thought of
+course if Miss Spence HAD become a little unbalanced it was my duty to
+know it, as Penrod's mother and she his teacher; so I thought I would
+just call on her at her apartment after school and have a chat and see
+and I did and--oh----”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I've just come from there, and she told me--she told me! Oh, I've NEVER
+known anything like this!”
+
+“WHAT did she tell you?”
+
+Mrs. Schofield, making a great effort, managed to assume a temporary
+appearance of calm. “Henry,” she said solemnly, “bear this in mind:
+whatever you do to Penrod, it must be done in some place when Clara
+won't hear it. But the first thing to do is to find him.”
+
+Within view of the window from which Mr. Schofield was gazing was the
+closed door of the storeroom in the stable, and just outside this door
+Duke was performing a most engaging trick.
+
+His young master had taught Duke to “sit up and beg” when he wanted
+anything, and if that didn't get it, to “speak.” Duke was facing the
+closed door and sitting up and begging, and now he also spoke--in a
+loud, clear bark.
+
+There was an open transom over the door, and from this descended--hurled
+by an unseen agency--a can half filled with old paint.
+
+It caught the small besieger of the door on his thoroughly surprised
+right ear, encouraged him to some remarkable acrobatics, and turned
+large portions of him a dull blue. Allowing only a moment to perplexity,
+and deciding, after a single and evidently unappetizing experiment,
+not to cleanse himself of paint, the loyal animal resumed his quaint,
+upright posture.
+
+Mr. Schofield seated himself on the window-sill, whence he could keep in
+view that pathetic picture of unrequited love.
+
+“Go on with your story, mamma,” he said. “I think I can find Penrod when
+we want him.”
+
+And a few minutes later he added, “And I think I know the place to do it
+in.”
+
+Again the faithful voice of Duke was heard, pleading outside the bolted
+door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII MISS RENNSDALE ACCEPTS
+
+“One-two-three; one-two-three--glide!” said Professor Bartet,
+emphasizing his instructions by a brisk collision of his palms at
+“glide.” “One-two-three; one-two-three--glide!”
+
+The school week was over, at last, but Penrod's troubles were not.
+
+Round and round the ballroom went the seventeen struggling little
+couples of the Friday Afternoon Dancing Class. Round and round went
+their reflections with them, swimming rhythmically in the polished, dark
+floor--white and blue and pink for the girls; black, with dabs of white,
+for the white-collared, white-gloved boys; and sparks and slivers
+of high light everywhere as the glistening pumps flickered along the
+surface like a school of flying fish. Every small pink face--with one
+exception--was painstaking and set for duty. It was a conscientious
+little merry-go-round.
+
+“One-two-three; one-two-three--glide! One-two-three;
+one-two-three--glide! One-two-th--Ha! Mister Penrod Schofield, you lose
+the step. Your left foot! No, no! This is the left! See--like me! Now
+again! One-two-three; one-two-three--glide! Better! Much better! Again!
+One-two-three; one-two-three--gl--Stop! Mr. Penrod Schofield, this
+dancing class is provided by the kind parents of the pupilses as much
+to learn the mannerss of good societies as to dance. You think you shall
+ever see a gentleman in good societies to tickle his partner in the
+dance till she say Ouch? Never! I assure you it is not done. Again! Now
+then! Piano, please! One-two-three; one-two-three--glide! Mr. Penrod
+Schofield, your right foot--your right foot! No, no! Stop!”
+
+The merry-go-round came to a standstill.
+
+“Mr. Penrod Schofield and partner”--Professor Bartet wiped his
+brow--“will you kindly observe me? One-two-three--glide! So! Now
+then--no; you will please keep your places, ladies and gentlemen. Mr.
+Penrod Schofield, I would puttickly like your attention, this is for
+you!”
+
+“Pickin' on me again!” murmured the smouldering Penrod to his small,
+unsympathetic partner. “Can't let me alone a minute!”
+
+“Mister Georgie Bassett, please step to the centre,” said the professor.
+
+Mr. Bassett complied with modest alacrity.
+
+“Teacher's pet!” whispered Penrod hoarsely. He had nothing but contempt
+for Georgie Bassett. The parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, cousins,
+governesses, housemaids, cooks, chauffeurs and coachmen, appertaining to
+the members of the dancing class, all dwelt in the same part of town and
+shared certain communal theories; and among the most firmly established
+was that which maintained Georgie Bassett to be the Best Boy in Town.
+Contrariwise, the unfortunate Penrod, largely because of his recent
+dazzling but disastrous attempts to control forces far beyond him,
+had been given a clear title as the Worst Boy in Town. (Population,
+135,000.) To precisely what degree his reputation was the product of
+his own energies cannot be calculated. It was Marjorie Jones who first
+applied the description, in its definite simplicity, the day after the
+“pageant,” and, possibly, her frequent and effusive repetitions of it,
+even upon wholly irrelevant occasions, had something to do with its
+prompt and quite perfect acceptance by the community.
+
+“Miss Rennsdale will please do me the fafer to be Mr. Georgie Bassett's
+partner for one moment,” said Professor Bartet. “Mr. Penrod Schofield
+will please give his attention. Miss Rennsdale and Mister Bassett,
+obliche me, if you please. Others please watch. Piano, please! Now
+then!”
+
+Miss Rennsdale, aged eight--the youngest lady in the class--and Mr.
+Georgie Bassett one-two-three--glided with consummate technique for the
+better education of Penrod Schofield. It is possible that amber-curled,
+beautiful Marjorie felt that she, rather than Miss Rennsdale, might have
+been selected as the example of perfection--or perhaps her remark was
+only woman.
+
+“Stopping everybody for that boy!” said Marjorie.
+
+Penrod, across the circle from her, heard distinctly--nay, he was
+obviously intended to hear; but over a scorched heart he preserved a
+stoic front. Whereupon Marjorie whispered derisively in the ear of her
+partner, Maurice Levy, who wore a pearl pin in his tie.
+
+“Again, please, everybody--ladies and gentlemen!” cried Professor
+Bartet. “Mister Penrod Schofield, if you please, pay puttickly
+attention! Piano, please! Now then!”
+
+The lesson proceeded. At the close of the hour Professor Bartet stepped
+to the centre of the room and clapped his hands for attention.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen, if you please to seat yourselves quietly,” he
+said; “I speak to you now about to-morrow. As you all know--Mister
+Penrod Schofield, I am not sticking up in a tree outside that window! If
+you do me the fafer to examine I am here, insides of the room. Now then!
+Piano, pl--no, I do not wish the piano! As you all know, this is the
+last lesson of the season until next October. Tomorrow is our special
+afternoon; beginning three o'clock, we dance the cotillon. But this
+afternoon comes the test of mannerss. You must see if each know how to
+make a little formal call like a grown-up people in good societies. You
+have had good, perfect instruction; let us see if we know how to perform
+like societies ladies and gentlemen twenty-six years of age.
+
+“Now, when you're dismissed each lady will go to her home and prepare to
+receive a call. The gentlemen will allow the ladies time to reach their
+houses and to prepare to receive callers; then each gentleman will call
+upon a lady and beg the pleasure to engage her for a partner in the
+cotillon to-morrow. You all know the correct, proper form for these
+calls, because didn't I work teaching you last lesson till I thought
+I would drop dead? Yes! Now each gentleman, if he reach a lady's house
+behind some-other gentleman, then he must go somewhere else to a lady's
+house, and keep calling until he secures a partner; so, as there are the
+same number of both, everybody shall have a partner.
+
+“Now please all remember that if in case--Mister Penrod Schofield, when
+you make your call on a lady I beg you to please remember that gentlemen
+in good societies do not scratch the back in societies as you appear to
+attempt; so please allow the hands to rest carelessly in the lap. Now
+please all remember that if in case--Mister Penrod Schofield, if you
+please! Gentlemen in societies do not scratch the back by causing
+frictions between it and the back of your chair, either! Nobody else is
+itching here! _I_ do not itch! I cannot talk if you must itch! In the
+name of Heaven, why must you always itch? What was I saying? Where ah!
+the cotillon--yes! For the cotillon it is important nobody shall fail
+to be here tomorrow; but if any one should be so very ill he cannot
+possible come he must write a very polite note of regrets in the form
+of good societies to his engaged partner to excuse himself--and he must
+give the reason.
+
+“I do not think anybody is going to be that sick to-morrow--no; and I
+will find out and report to parents if anybody would try it and not be.
+But it is important for the cotillon that we have an even number of so
+many couples, and if it should happen that someone comes and her partner
+has sent her a polite note that he has genuine reasons why he cannot
+come, the note must be handed at once to me, so that I arrange some
+other partner. Is all understood? Yes. The gentlemen will remember now
+to allow the ladies plenty of time to reach their houses and prepare
+to receive calls. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your polite
+attention.”
+
+It was nine blocks to the house of Marjorie Jones; but Penrod did it in
+less than seven minutes from a flying start--such was his haste to lay
+himself and his hand for the cotillon at the feet of one who had so
+recently spoken unamiably of him in public. He had not yet learned that
+the only safe male rebuke to a scornful female is to stay away from
+her--especially if that is what she desires. However, he did not wish
+to rebuke her; simply and ardently he wished to dance the cotillon with
+her. Resentment was swallowed up in hope.
+
+The fact that Miss Jones' feeling for him bore a striking resemblance to
+that of Simon Legree for Uncle Tom, deterred him not at all. Naturally,
+he was not wholly unconscious that when he should lay his hand for the
+cotillon at her feet it would be her inward desire to step on it; but
+he believed that if he were first in the field Marjorie would have to
+accept. These things are governed by law.
+
+It was his fond intention to reach her house even in advance of herself,
+and with grave misgiving he beheld a large automobile at rest before the
+sainted gate. Forthwith, a sinking feeling became a portent inside him
+as little Maurice Levy emerged from the front door of the house.
+
+“'Lo, Penrod!” said Maurice airily.
+
+“What you doin' in there?” inquired Penrod.
+
+“In where?”
+
+“In Marjorie's.”
+
+“Well, what shouldn't I be doin' in Marjorie's?” Mr. Levy returned
+indignantly. “I was inviting her for my partner in the cotillon--what
+you s'pose?”
+
+“You haven't got any right to!” Penrod protested hotly. “You can't do it
+yet.”
+
+“I did do it yet!” said Maurice.
+
+“You can't!” insisted Penrod. “You got to allow them time first. He said
+the ladies had to be allowed time to prepare.”
+
+“Well, ain't she had time to prepare?”
+
+“When?” Penrod demanded, stepping close to his rival threateningly. “I'd
+like to know when----”
+
+“When?” echoed the other with shrill triumph. “When? Why, in mamma's
+sixty-horse powder limousine automobile, what Marjorie came home with me
+in! I guess that's when!”
+
+An impulse in the direction of violence became visible upon the
+countenance of Penrod.
+
+“I expect you need some wiping down,” he began dangerously. “I'll give
+you sumpthing to remem----”
+
+“Oh, you will!” Maurice cried with astonishing truculence, contorting
+himself into what he may have considered a posture of defense. “Let's
+see you try it, you--you itcher!”
+
+For the moment, defiance from such a source was dumfounding. Then,
+luckily, Penrod recollected something and glanced at the automobile.
+
+Perceiving therein not only the alert chauffeur but the magnificent
+outlines of Mrs. Levy, his enemy's mother, he manoeuvred his lifted hand
+so that it seemed he had but meant to scratch his ear.
+
+“Well, I guess I better be goin',” he said casually. “See you tomorrow!”
+
+Maurice mounted to the lap of luxury, and Penrod strolled away with an
+assumption of careless ease which was put to a severe strain when, from
+the rear window of the car, a sudden protuberance in the nature of a
+small, dark, curly head shrieked scornfully:
+
+“Go on--you big stiff!”
+
+The cotillon loomed dismally before Penrod now; but it was his duty
+to secure a partner and he set about it with a dreary heart. The delay
+occasioned by his fruitless attempt on Marjorie and the altercation with
+his enemy at her gate had allowed other ladies ample time to prepare for
+callers--and to receive them. Sadly he went from house to house, finding
+that he had been preceded in one after the other. Altogether his
+hand for the cotillon was declined eleven times that afternoon on the
+legitimate ground of previous engagement. This, with Marjorie, scored
+off all except five of the seventeen possible partners; and four of the
+five were also sealed away from him, as he learned in chance encounters
+with other boys upon the street.
+
+One lady alone remained; he bowed to the inevitable and entered this
+lorn damsel's gate at twilight with an air of great discouragement. The
+lorn damsel was Miss Rennsdale, aged eight.
+
+We are apt to forget that there are actually times of life when too much
+youth is a handicap. Miss Rennsdale was beautiful; she danced like a
+premiere; she had every charm but age. On that account alone had she
+been allowed so much time to prepare to receive callers that it was only
+by the most manful efforts she could keep her lip from trembling.
+
+A decorous maid conducted the long-belated applicant to her where she
+sat upon a sofa beside a nursery governess. The decorous maid announced
+him composedly as he made his entrance.
+
+“Mr. Penrod Schofield!”
+
+Miss Rennsdale suddenly burst into loud sobs.
+
+“Oh!” she wailed. “I just knew it would be him!”
+
+The decorous maid's composure vanished at once--likewise her decorum.
+She clapped her hand over her mouth and fled, uttering sounds. The
+governess, however, set herself to comfort her heartbroken charge, and
+presently succeeded in restoring Miss Rennsdale to a semblance of that
+poise with which a lady receives callers and accepts invitations to
+dance cotillons. But she continued to sob at intervals.
+
+Feeling himself at perhaps a disadvantage, Penrod made offer of his
+hand for the morrow with a little embarrassment. Following the form
+prescribed by Professor Bartet, he advanced several paces toward the
+stricken lady and bowed formally.
+
+“I hope,” he said by rote, “you're well, and your parents also in good
+health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as your partner
+t'-morrow afternoon?”
+
+The wet eyes of Miss Rennsdale searched his countenance without
+pleasure, and a shudder wrung her small shoulders; but the governess
+whispered to her instructively, and she made a great effort.
+
+“I thu-thank you fu-for your polite invu-invu-invutation; and I ac----”
+ Thus far she progressed when emotion overcame her again. She beat
+frantically upon the sofa with fists and heels. “Oh, I DID want it to be
+Georgie Bassett!”
+
+“No, no, no!” said the governess, and whispered urgently, whereupon Miss
+Rennsdale was able to complete her acceptance.
+
+“And I ac-accept wu-with pu-pleasure!” she moaned, and immediately,
+uttering a loud yell, flung herself face downward upon the sofa,
+clutching her governess convulsively.
+
+Somewhat disconcerted, Penrod bowed again.
+
+“I thank you for your polite acceptance,” he murmured hurriedly; “and
+I trust--I trust--I forget. Oh, yes--I trust we shall have a most
+enjoyable occasion. Pray present my compliments to your parents; and I
+must now wish you a very good afternoon.”
+
+Concluding these courtly demonstrations with another bow he withdrew in
+fair order, though thrown into partial confusion in the hall by a final
+wail from his crushed hostess:
+
+“Oh! Why couldn't it be anybody but HIM!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII THE SMALLPOX MEDICINE
+
+Next morning Penrod woke in profound depression of spirit, the cotillon
+ominous before him. He pictured Marjorie Jones and Maurice, graceful and
+light-hearted, flitting by him fairylike, loosing silvery laughter upon
+him as he engaged in the struggle to keep step with a partner about four
+years and two feet his junior. It was hard enough for Penrod to keep
+step with a girl of his size.
+
+The foreboding vision remained with him, increasing in vividness,
+throughout the forenoon. He found himself unable to fix his mind
+upon anything else, and, having bent his gloomy footsteps toward the
+sawdust-box, after breakfast, presently descended therefrom, abandoning
+Harold Ramorez where he had left him the preceding Saturday. Then, as he
+sat communing silently with wistful Duke, in the storeroom, coquettish
+fortune looked his way.
+
+It was the habit of Penrod's mother not to throw away anything
+whatsoever until years of storage conclusively proved there would never
+be a use for it; but a recent house-cleaning had ejected upon the back
+porch a great quantity of bottles and other paraphernalia of medicine,
+left over from illnesses in the family during a period of several years.
+This debris Della, the cook, had collected in a large market basket,
+adding to it some bottles of flavouring extracts that had proved
+unpopular in the household; also, old catsup bottles; a jar or two of
+preserves gone bad; various rejected dental liquids--and other things.
+And she carried the basket out to the storeroom in the stable.
+
+Penrod was at first unaware of what lay before him. Chin on palms, he
+sat upon the iron rim of a former aquarium and stared morbidly through
+the open door at the checkered departing back of Della. It was another
+who saw treasure in the basket she had left.
+
+Mr. Samuel Williams, aged eleven, and congenial to Penrod in years,
+sex, and disposition, appeared in the doorway, shaking into foam a black
+liquid within a pint bottle, stoppered by a thumb.
+
+“Yay, Penrod!” the visitor gave greeting.
+
+“Yay,” said Penrod with slight enthusiasm. “What you got?”
+
+“Lickrish water.”
+
+“Drinkin's!” demanded Penrod promptly. This is equivalent to the cry of
+“Biters” when an apple is shown, and establishes unquestionable title.
+
+“Down to there!” stipulated Sam, removing his thumb to affix it firmly
+as a mark upon the side of the bottle a check upon gormandizing that
+remained carefully in place while Penrod drank.
+
+This rite concluded, the visitor's eye fell upon the basket deposited by
+Della. He emitted tokens of pleasure.
+
+“Looky! Looky! Looky there! That ain't any good pile o' stuff--oh, no!”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“Drug store!” shouted Sam. “We'll be partners----”
+
+“Or else,” Penrod suggested, “I'll run the drug store and you be a
+customer----”
+
+“No! Partners!” insisted Sam with such conviction that his host yielded;
+and within ten minutes the drug store was doing a heavy business with
+imaginary patrons. Improvising counters with boards and boxes, and
+setting forth a very druggish-looking stock from the basket, each of the
+partners found occupation to his taste--Penrod as salesman and Sam as
+prescription clerk.
+
+“Here you are, madam!” said Penrod briskly, offering a vial of Sam's
+mixing to an invisible matron. “This will cure your husband in a few
+minutes. Here's the camphor, mister. Call again! Fifty cents' worth of
+pills? Yes, madam. There you are! Hurry up with that dose for the nigger
+lady, Bill!”
+
+“I'll 'tend to it soon's I get time, Jim,” replied the prescription
+clerk. “I'm busy fixin' the smallpox medicine for the sick policeman
+downtown.”
+
+Penrod stopped sales to watch this operation. Sam had found an empty
+pint bottle and, with the pursed lips and measuring eye of a great
+chemist, was engaged in filling it from other bottles.
+
+First, he poured into it some of the syrup from the condemned preserves;
+and a quantity of extinct hair oil; next the remaining contents of a
+dozen small vials cryptically labelled with physicians' prescriptions;
+then some remnants of catsup and essence of beef and what was left
+in several bottles of mouthwash; after that a quantity of rejected
+flavouring extract--topping off by shaking into the mouth of the
+bottle various powders from small pink papers, relics of Mr. Schofield's
+influenza of the preceding winter.
+
+Sam examined the combination with concern, appearing unsatisfied. “We
+got to make that smallpox medicine good and strong!” he remarked; and,
+his artistic sense growing more powerful than his appetite, he poured
+about a quarter of the licorice water into the smallpox medicine.
+
+“What you doin'?” protested Penrod. “What you want to waste that
+lickrish water for? We ought to keep it to drink when we're tired.”
+
+“I guess I got a right to use my own lickrish water any way I want to,”
+ replied the prescription clerk. “I tell you, you can't get smallpox
+medicine too strong. Look at her now!” He held the bottle up admiringly.
+“She's as black as lickrish. I bet you she's strong all right!”
+
+“I wonder how she tastes?” said Penrod thoughtfully.
+
+“Don't smell so awful much,” observed Sam, sniffing the bottle--“a good
+deal, though!”
+
+“I wonder if it'd make us sick to drink it?” said Penrod.
+
+Sam looked at the bottle thoughtfully; then his eye, wandering, fell
+upon Duke, placidly curled up near the door, and lighted with the advent
+of an idea new to him, but old, old in the world--older than Egypt!
+
+“Let's give Duke some!” he cried.
+
+That was the spark. They acted immediately; and a minute later Duke,
+released from custody with a competent potion of the smallpox medicine
+inside him, settled conclusively their doubts concerning its effect. The
+patient animal, accustomed to expect the worst at all times, walked out
+of the door, shaking his head with an air of considerable annoyance,
+opening and closing his mouth with singular energy--and so repeatedly
+that they began to count the number of times he did it. Sam thought it
+was thirty-nine times, but Penrod had counted forty-one before other and
+more striking symptoms appeared.
+
+All things come from Mother Earth and must return--Duke restored much
+at this time. Afterward, he ate heartily of grass; and then, over his
+shoulder, he bent upon his master one inscrutable look and departed
+feebly to the front yard.
+
+The two boys had watched the process with warm interest. “I told you she
+was strong!” said Mr. Williams proudly.
+
+“Yes, sir--she is!” Penrod was generous enough to admit. “I expect she's
+strong enough----” He paused in thought, and added:
+
+“We haven't got a horse any more.”
+
+“I bet you she'd fix him if you had!” said Sam. And it may be that this
+was no idle boast.
+
+The pharmaceutical game was not resumed; the experiment upon Duke had
+made the drug store commonplace and stimulated the appetite for stronger
+meat. Lounging in the doorway, the near-vivisectionists sipped licorice
+water alternately and conversed.
+
+“I bet some of our smallpox medicine would fix ole P'fessor Bartet all
+right!” quoth Penrod. “I wish he'd come along and ask us for some.”
+
+“We could tell him it was lickrish water,” added Sam, liking the idea.
+“The two bottles look almost the same.”
+
+“Then we wouldn't have to go to his ole cotillon this afternoon,” Penrod
+sighed. “There wouldn't be any!”
+
+“Who's your partner, Pen?”
+
+“Who's yours?”
+
+“Who's yours? I just ast you.”
+
+“Oh, she's all right!” And Penrod smiled boastfully.
+
+“I bet you wanted to dance with Marjorie!” said his friend.
+
+“Me? I wouldn't dance with that girl if she begged me to! I wouldn't
+dance with her to save her from drowning! I wouldn't da----”
+
+“Oh, no--you wouldn't!” interrupted Mr. Williams skeptically.
+
+Penrod changed his tone and became persuasive.
+
+“Looky here, Sam,” he said confidentially. “I've got 'a mighty nice
+partner, but my mother don't like her mother; and so I've been thinking
+I better not dance with her. I'll tell you what I'll do; I've got a
+mighty good sling in the house, and I'll give it to you if you'll change
+partners.”
+
+“You want to change and you don't even know who mine is!” said Sam, and
+he made the simple though precocious deduction: “Yours must be a lala!
+Well, I invited Mabel Rorebeck, and she wouldn't let me change if
+I wanted to. Mabel Rorebeck'd rather dance with me,” he continued
+serenely, “than anybody; and she said she was awful afraid you'd ast
+her. But I ain't goin' to dance with Mabel after all, because this
+morning she sent me a note about her uncle died last night--and P'fessor
+Bartet'll have to find me a partner after I get there. Anyway I bet you
+haven't got any sling--and I bet your partner's Baby Rennsdale!”
+
+“What if she is?” said Penrod. “She's good enough for ME!” This speech
+held not so much modesty in solution as intended praise of the lady.
+Taken literally, however, it was an understatement of the facts and
+wholly insincere.
+
+“Yay!” jeered Mr. Williams, upon whom his friend's hypocrisy was quite
+wasted. “How can your mother not like her mother? Baby Rennsdale hasn't
+got any mother! You and her'll be a sight!”
+
+That was Penrod's own conviction; and with this corroboration of it
+he grew so spiritless that he could offer no retort. He slid to a
+despondent sitting posture upon the door sill and gazed wretchedly upon
+the ground, while his companion went to replenish the licorice water at
+the hydrant--enfeebling the potency of the liquor no doubt, but making
+up for that in quantity.
+
+“Your mother goin' with you to the cotillon?” asked Sam when he
+returned.
+
+“No. She's goin' to meet me there. She's goin' somewhere first.”
+
+“So's mine,” said Sam. “I'll come by for you.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+“I better go before long. Noon whistles been blowin'.”
+
+“All right,” Penrod repeated dully.
+
+Sam turned to go, but paused. A new straw hat was peregrinating along
+the fence near the two boys. This hat belonged to someone passing upon
+the sidewalk of the cross-street; and the someone was Maurice Levy.
+Even as they stared, he halted and regarded them over the fence with two
+small, dark eyes.
+
+Fate had brought about this moment and this confrontation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV MAURICE LEVY'S CONSTITUTION
+
+“Lo, Sam!” said Maurice cautiously. “What you doin'?”
+
+Penrod at that instant had a singular experience--an intellectual shock
+like a flash of fire in the brain. Sitting in darkness, a great light
+flooded him with wild brilliance. He gasped!
+
+“What you doin'?” repeated Mr. Levy.
+
+Penrod sprang to his feet, seized the licorice bottle, shook it with
+stoppering thumb, and took a long drink with histrionic unction.
+
+“What you doin'?” asked Maurice for the third time, Sam Williams not
+having decided upon a reply.
+
+It was Penrod who answered.
+
+“Drinkin' lickrish water,” he said simply, and wiped his mouth with such
+delicious enjoyment that Sam's jaded thirst was instantly stimulated. He
+took the bottle eagerly from Penrod.
+
+“A-a-h!” exclaimed Penrod, smacking his lips. “That was a good un!”
+
+The eyes above the fence glistened.
+
+“Ask him if he don't want some,” Penrod whispered urgently. “Quit
+drinkin' it! It's no good any more. Ask him!”
+
+“What for?” demanded the practical Sam.
+
+“Go on and ask him!” whispered Penrod fiercely.
+
+“Say, M'rice!” Sam called, waving the bottle. “Want some?”
+
+“Bring it here!” Mr. Levy requested.
+
+“Come on over and get some,” returned Sam, being prompted.
+
+“I can't. Penrod Schofield's after me.”
+
+“No, I'm not,” said Penrod reassuringly. “I won't touch you, M'rice.
+I made up with you yesterday afternoon--don't you remember? You're all
+right with me, M'rice.”
+
+Maurice looked undecided. But Penrod had the delectable bottle again,
+and tilting it above his lips, affected to let the cool liquid purl
+enrichingly into him, while with his right hand he stroked his middle
+facade ineffably. Maurice's mouth watered.
+
+“Here!” cried Sam, stirred again by the superb manifestations of his
+friend. “Gimme that!”
+
+Penrod brought the bottle down, surprisingly full after so much gusto,
+but withheld it from Sam; and the two scuffled for its possession.
+Nothing in the world could have so worked upon the desire of the
+yearning observer beyond the fence.
+
+“Honest, Penrod--you ain't goin' to touch me if I come in your yard?” he
+called. “Honest?”
+
+“Cross my heart!” answered Penrod, holding the bottle away from Sam.
+“And we'll let you drink all you want.”
+
+Maurice hastily climbed the fence, and while he was thus occupied Mr.
+Samuel Williams received a great enlightenment. With startling rapidity
+Penrod, standing just outside the storeroom door, extended his arm
+within the room, deposited the licorice water upon the counter of the
+drug store, seized in its stead the bottle of smallpox medicine, and
+extended it cordially toward the advancing Maurice.
+
+Genius is like that--great, simple, broad strokes!
+
+Dazzled, Mr. Samuel Williams leaned against the wall. He had
+the sensations of one who comes suddenly into the presence of a
+chef-d'oeuvre. Perhaps his first coherent thought was that almost
+universal one on such huge occasions: “Why couldn't _I_ have done that!”
+
+Sam might have been even more dazzled had he guessed that he figured not
+altogether as a spectator in the sweeping and magnificent conception of
+the new Talleyrand. Sam had no partner for the cotillon. If Maurice
+was to be absent from that festivity--as it began to seem he might
+be--Penrod needed a male friend to take care of Miss Rennsdale and he
+believed he saw his way to compel Mr. Williams to be that male friend.
+For this he relied largely upon the prospective conduct of Miss
+Rennsdale when he should get the matter before her--he was inclined to
+believe she would favour the exchange. As for Talleyrand Penrod himself,
+he was going to dance that cotillon with Marjorie Jones!
+
+“You can have all you can drink at one pull, M'rice,” said Penrod
+kindly.
+
+“You said I could have all I want!” protested Maurice, reaching for the
+bottle.
+
+“No, I didn't,” returned Penrod quickly, holding it away from the eager
+hand.
+
+“He did, too! Didn't he, Sam?”
+
+Sam could not reply; his eyes, fixed upon the bottle, protruded
+strangely.
+
+“You heard him--didn't you, Sam?”
+
+“Well, if I did say it I didn't mean it!” said Penrod hastily, quoting
+from one of the authorities. “Looky here, M'rice,” he continued,
+assuming a more placative and reasoning tone, “that wouldn't be fair to
+us. I guess we want some of our own lickrish water, don't we? The bottle
+ain't much over two-thirds full anyway. What I meant was, you can have
+all you can drink at one pull.”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“Why, this way: you can gulp all you want, so long as you keep
+swallering; but you can't take the bottle out of your mouth and commence
+again. Soon's you quit swallering it's Sam's turn.”
+
+“No; you can have next, Penrod,” said Sam.
+
+“Well, anyway, I mean M'rice has to give the bottle up the minute he
+stops swallering.”
+
+Craft appeared upon the face of Maurice, like a poster pasted on a wall.
+
+“I can drink so long I don't stop swallering?”
+
+“Yes; that's it.”
+
+“All right!” he cried. “Gimme the bottle!”
+
+And Penrod placed it in his hand.
+
+“You promise to let me drink until I quit swallering?” Maurice insisted.
+
+“Yes!” said both boys together.
+
+With that, Maurice placed the bottle to his lips and began to drink.
+Penrod and Sam leaned forward in breathless excitement. They had feared
+Maurice might smell the contents of the bottle; but that danger was
+past--this was the crucial moment. Their fondest hope was that he would
+make his first swallow a voracious one--it was impossible to imagine a
+second. They expected one big, gulping swallow and then an explosion,
+with fountain effects.
+
+Little they knew the mettle of their man! Maurice swallowed once; he
+swallowed twice--and thrice--and he continued to swallow! No Adam's
+apple was sculptured on that juvenile throat, but the internal progress
+of the liquid was not a whit the less visible. His eyes gleamed with
+cunning and malicious triumph, sidewise, at the stunned conspirators;
+he was fulfilling the conditions of the draught, not once breaking the
+thread of that marvelous swallering.
+
+His audience stood petrified. Already Maurice had swallowed more than
+they had given Duke and still the liquor receded in the uplifted bottle!
+And now the clear glass gleamed above the dark contents full half the
+vessel's length--and Maurice went on drinking! Slowly the clear glass
+increased in its dimensions--slowly the dark diminished.
+
+Sam Williams made a horrified movement to check him--but Maurice
+protested passionately with his disengaged arm, and made vehement vocal
+noises remindful of the contract; whereupon Sam desisted and watched the
+continuing performance in a state of grisly fascination.
+
+Maurice drank it all! He drained the last drop and threw the bottle in
+the air, uttering loud ejaculations of triumph and satisfaction.
+
+“Hah!” he cried, blowing out his cheeks, inflating his chest, squaring
+his shoulders, patting his stomach, and wiping his mouth contentedly.
+“Hah! Aha! Waha! Wafwah! But that was good!”
+
+The two boys stood looking at him in stupor.
+
+“Well, I gotta say this,” said Maurice graciously: “You stuck to your
+bargain all right and treated me fair.”
+
+Stricken with a sudden horrible suspicion, Penrod entered the storeroom
+in one stride and lifted the bottle of licorice water to his nose--then
+to his lips. It was weak, but good; he had made no mistake. And Maurice
+had really drained--to the dregs--the bottle of old hair tonics, dead
+catsups, syrups of undesirable preserves, condemned extracts of
+vanilla and lemon, decayed chocolate, ex-essence of beef, mixed dental
+preparations, aromatic spirits of ammonia, spirits of nitre, alcohol,
+arnica, quinine, ipecac, sal volatile, nux vomica and licorice water--
+with traces of arsenic, belladonna and strychnine.
+
+Penrod put the licorice water out of sight and turned to face the
+others. Maurice was seating himself on a box just outside the door and
+had taken a package of cigarettes from his pocket.
+
+“Nobody can see me from here, can they?” he said, striking a match. “You
+fellers smoke?”
+
+“No,” said Sam, staring at him haggardly.
+
+“No,” said Penrod in a whisper.
+
+Maurice lit his cigarette and puffed showily.
+
+“Well, sir,” he remarked, “you fellers are certainly square--I gotta
+say that much. Honest, Penrod, I thought you was after me! I did
+think so,” he added sunnily; “but now I guess you like me, or else
+you wouldn't of stuck to it about lettin' me drink it all if I kept on
+swallering.”
+
+He chatted on with complete geniality, smoking his cigarette in content.
+And as he ran from one topic to another his hearers stared at him in a
+kind of torpor. Never once did they exchange a glance with each other;
+their eyes were frozen to Maurice. The cheerful conversationalist made
+it evident that he was not without gratitude.
+
+“Well,” he said as he finished his cigarette and rose to go, “you
+fellers have treated me nice and some day you come over to my yard; I'd
+like to run with you fellers. You're the kind of fellers I like.”
+
+Penrod's jaw fell; Sam's mouth had been open all the time. Neither
+spoke.
+
+“I gotta go,” observed Maurice, consulting a handsome watch. “Gotta get
+dressed for the cotillon right after lunch. Come on, Sam. Don't you have
+to go, too?”
+
+Sam nodded dazedly.
+
+“Well, good-bye, Penrod,” said Maurice cordially. “I'm glad you like me
+all right. Come on, Sam.”
+
+Penrod leaned against the doorpost and with fixed and glazing eyes
+watched the departure of his two visitors. Maurice was talking volubly,
+with much gesticulation, as they went; but Sam walked mechanically
+and in silence, staring at his brisk companion and keeping at a little
+distance from him.
+
+They passed from sight, Maurice still conversing gayly--and Penrod
+slowly betook himself into the house, his head bowed upon his chest.
+
+
+Some three hours later, Mr. Samuel Williams, waxen clean and in sweet
+raiment, made his reappearance in Penrod's yard, yodelling a code-signal
+to summon forth his friend. He yodelled loud, long, and frequently,
+finally securing a faint response from the upper air.
+
+“Where are you?” shouted Mr. Williams, his roving glance searching
+ambient heights. Another low-spirited yodel reaching his ear, he
+perceived the head and shoulders of his friend projecting above the
+roofridge of the stable. The rest of Penrod's body was concealed from
+view, reposing upon the opposite slant of the gable and precariously
+secured by the crooking of his elbows over the ridge.
+
+“Yay! What you doin' up there?”
+
+“Nothin'.”
+
+“You better be careful!” Sam called. “You'll slide off and fall down in
+the alley if you don't look out. I come pert' near it last time we was
+up there. Come on down! Ain't you goin' to the cotillon?”
+
+Penrod made no reply. Sam came nearer.
+
+“Say,” he called up in a guarded voice, “I went to our telephone a while
+ago and ast him how he was feelin', and he said he felt fine!”
+
+“So did I,” said Penrod. “He told me he felt bully!”
+
+Sam thrust his hands in his pockets and brooded. The opening of the
+kitchen door caused a diversion. It was Della.
+
+“Mister Penrod,” she bellowed forthwith, “come ahn down fr'm up there!
+Y'r mamma's at the dancin' class waitin' fer ye, an' she's telephoned
+me they're goin' to begin--an' what's the matter with ye? Come ahn down
+fr'm up there!”
+
+“Come on!” urged Sam. “We'll be late. There go Maurice and Marjorie
+now.”
+
+A glittering car spun by, disclosing briefly a genre picture of Marjorie
+Jones in pink, supporting a monstrous sheaf of American Beauty roses.
+Maurice, sitting shining and joyous beside her, saw both boys and waved
+them a hearty greeting as the car turned the corner.
+
+Penrod uttered some muffled words and then waved both arms--either in
+response or as an expression of his condition of mind; it may have
+been a gesture of despair. How much intention there was in this
+act--obviously so rash, considering the position he occupied--it
+is impossible to say. Undeniably there must remain a suspicion of
+deliberate purpose.
+
+Della screamed and Sam shouted. Penrod had disappeared from view.
+
+The delayed dance was about to begin a most uneven cotillon when Samuel
+Williams arrived.
+
+Mrs. Schofield hurriedly left the ballroom; while Miss Rennsdale,
+flushing with sudden happiness, curtsied profoundly to Professor Bartet
+and obtained his attention.
+
+“I have telled you fifty times,” he informed her passionately ere she
+spoke, “I cannot make no such changes. If your partner comes you have to
+dance with him. You are going to drive me crazy, sure! What is it? What
+now? What you want?”
+
+The damsel curtsied again and handed him the following communication,
+addressed to herself:
+
+
+“Dear madam Please excuse me from dancing the cotilon with you
+this afternoon as I have fell off the barn
+
+“Sincerly yours
+
+“PENROD SCHOFIELD.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV THE TWO FAMILIES
+
+Penrod entered the schoolroom, Monday picturesquely leaning upon a man's
+cane shortened to support a cripple approaching the age of twelve. He
+arrived about twenty minutes late, limping deeply, his brave young mouth
+drawn with pain, and the sensation he created must have been a solace to
+him; the only possible criticism of this entrance being that it was just
+a shade too heroic. Perhaps for that reason it failed to stagger Miss
+Spence, a woman so saturated with suspicion that she penalized Penrod
+for tardiness as promptly and as coldly as if he had been a mere,
+ordinary, unmutilated boy. Nor would she entertain any discussion of the
+justice of her ruling. It seemed, almost, that she feared to argue with
+him.
+
+However, the distinction of cane and limp remained to him, consolations
+which he protracted far into the week--until Thursday evening, in fact,
+when Mr. Schofield, observing from a window his son's pursuit of Duke
+round and round the backyard, confiscated the cane, with the promise
+that it should not remain idle if he saw Penrod limping again. Thus,
+succeeding a depressing Friday, another Saturday brought the necessity
+for new inventions.
+
+It was a scented morning in apple-blossom time. At about ten of the
+clock Penrod emerged hastily from the kitchen door. His pockets bulged
+abnormally; so did his checks, and he swallowed with difficulty. A
+threatening mop, wielded by a cooklike arm in a checkered sleeve,
+followed him through the doorway, and he was preceded by a small,
+hurried, wistful dog with a warm doughnut in his mouth. The kitchen door
+slammed petulantly, enclosing the sore voice of Della, whereupon Penrod
+and Duke seated themselves upon the pleasant sward and immediately
+consumed the spoils of their raid.
+
+From the cross-street which formed the side boundary of the Schofields'
+ample yard came a jingle of harness and the cadenced clatter of a pair
+of trotting horses, and Penrod, looking up, beheld the passing of a
+fat acquaintance, torpid amid the conservative splendours of a rather
+old-fashioned victoria. This was Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, a
+fellow sufferer at the Friday Afternoon Dancing Class, but otherwise not
+often a companion: a home-sheltered lad, tutored privately and preserved
+against the coarsening influences of rude comradeship and miscellaneous
+information. Heavily overgrown in all physical dimensions, virtuous,
+and placid, this cloistered mutton was wholly uninteresting to Penrod
+Schofield. Nevertheless, Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, was a
+personage on account of the importance of the Magsworth Bitts family;
+and it was Penrod's destiny to increase Roderick's celebrity far, far
+beyond its present aristocratic limitations.
+
+The Magsworth Bittses were important because they were impressive; there
+was no other reason. And they were impressive because they believed
+themselves important. The adults of the family were impregnably formal;
+they dressed with reticent elegance, and wore the same nose and the
+same expression--an expression which indicated that they knew something
+exquisite and sacred which other people could never know. Other people,
+in their presence, were apt to feel mysteriously ignoble and to
+become secretly uneasy about ancestors, gloves, and pronunciation. The
+Magsworth Bitts manner was withholding and reserved, though sometimes
+gracious, granting small smiles as great favours and giving off a
+chilling kind of preciousness. Naturally, when any citizen of the
+community did anything unconventional or improper, or made a mistake, or
+had a relative who went wrong, that citizen's first and worst fear
+was that the Magsworth Bittses would hear of it. In fact, this painful
+family had for years terrorized the community, though the community
+had never realized that it was terrorized, and invariably spoke of the
+family as the “most charming circle in town.” By common consent, Mrs.
+Roderick Magsworth Bitts officiated as the supreme model as well as
+critic-in-chief of morals and deportment for all the unlucky people
+prosperous enough to be elevated to her acquaintance.
+
+Magsworth was the important part of the name. Mrs. Roderick Magsworth
+Bitts was a Magsworth born, herself, and the Magsworth crest decorated
+not only Mrs. Magsworth Bitts' note-paper but was on the china, on the
+table linen, on the chimney-pieces, on the opaque glass of the front
+door, on the victoria, and on the harness, though omitted from the
+garden-hose and the lawn-mower.
+
+Naturally, no sensible person dreamed of connecting that illustrious
+crest with the unfortunate and notorious Rena Magsworth whose name had
+grown week by week into larger and larger type upon the front pages of
+newspapers, owing to the gradually increasing public and official belief
+that she had poisoned a family of eight. However, the statement that no
+sensible person could have connected the Magsworth Bitts family with the
+arsenical Rena takes no account of Penrod Schofield.
+
+Penrod never missed a murder, a hanging or an electrocution in the
+newspapers; he knew almost as much about Rena Magsworth as her jurymen
+did, though they sat in a court-room two hundred miles away, and he had
+it in mind--so frank he was--to ask Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, if
+the murderess happened to be a relative.
+
+The present encounter, being merely one of apathetic greeting, did not
+afford the opportunity. Penrod took off his cap, and Roderick, seated
+between his mother and one of his grown-up sisters, nodded sluggishly,
+but neither Mrs. Magsworth Bitts nor her daughter acknowledged the
+salutation of the boy in the yard. They disapproved of him as a
+person of little consequence, and that little, bad. Snubbed, Penrod
+thoughtfully restored his cap to his head. A boy can be cut as
+effectually as a man, and this one was chilled to a low temperature. He
+wondered if they despised him because they had seen a last fragment of
+doughnut in his hand; then he thought that perhaps it was Duke who had
+disgraced him. Duke was certainly no fashionable looking dog.
+
+The resilient spirits of youth, however, presently revived, and
+discovering a spider upon one knee and a beetle simultaneously upon the
+other, Penrod forgot Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts in the course of
+some experiments infringing upon the domain of Doctor Carrel. Penrod's
+efforts--with the aid of a pin--to effect a transference of living
+organism were unsuccessful; but he convinced himself forever that a
+spider cannot walk with a beetle's legs. Della then enhanced zoological
+interest by depositing upon the back porch a large rat-trap from the
+cellar, the prison of four live rats awaiting execution.
+
+Penrod at once took possession, retiring to the empty stable, where
+he installed the rats in a small wooden box with a sheet of broken
+window-glass--held down by a brickbat--over the top. Thus the symptoms
+of their agitation, when the box was shaken or hammered upon, could be
+studied at leisure. Altogether this Saturday was starting splendidly.
+
+After a time, the student's attention was withdrawn from his specimens
+by a peculiar smell, which, being followed up by a system of selective
+sniffing, proved to be an emanation leaking into the stable from the
+alley. He opened the back door.
+
+Across the alley was a cottage which a thrifty neighbour had built on
+the rear line of his lot and rented to negroes; and the fact that a
+negro family was now in process of “moving in” was manifested by the
+presence of a thin mule and a ramshackle wagon, the latter laden
+with the semblance of a stove and a few other unpretentious household
+articles.
+
+A very small darky boy stood near the mule. In his hand was a rusty
+chain, and at the end of the chain the delighted Penrod perceived the
+source of the special smell he was tracing--a large raccoon. Duke,
+who had shown not the slightest interest in the rats, set up a frantic
+barking and simulated a ravening assault upon the strange animal. It
+was only a bit of acting, however, for Duke was an old dog, had suffered
+much, and desired no unnecessary sorrow, wherefore he confined his
+demonstrations to alarums and excursions, and presently sat down at
+a distance and expressed himself by intermittent threatenings in a
+quavering falsetto.
+
+“What's that 'coon's name?” asked Penrod, intending no discourtesy.
+
+“Aim gommo mame,” said the small darky.
+
+“What?”
+
+“Aim gommo mame.”
+
+“WHAT?”
+
+The small darky looked annoyed.
+
+“Aim GOMMO mame, I hell you,” he said impatiently.
+
+Penrod conceived that insult was intended.
+
+“What's the matter of you?” he demanded advancing. “You get fresh with
+ME, and I'll----”
+
+“Hyuh, white boy!” A coloured youth of Penrod's own age appeared in
+the doorway of the cottage. “You let 'at brothuh mine alone. He ain' do
+nothin' to you.”
+
+“Well, why can't he answer?”
+
+“He can't. He can't talk no better'n what he WAS talkin'. He
+tongue-tie'.”
+
+“Oh,” said Penrod, mollified. Then, obeying an impulse so universally
+aroused in the human breast under like circumstances that it has become
+a quip, he turned to the afflicted one.
+
+“Talk some more,” he begged eagerly.
+
+“I hoe you ackoom aim gommo mame,” was the prompt response, in which
+a slight ostentation was manifest. Unmistakable tokens of vanity had
+appeared upon the small, swart countenance.
+
+“What's he mean?” asked Penrod, enchanted.
+
+“He say he tole you 'at 'coon ain' got no name.”
+
+“What's YOUR name?”
+
+“I'm name Herman.”
+
+“What's his name?” Penrod pointed to the tongue-tied boy.
+
+“Verman.”
+
+“What!”
+
+“Verman. Was three us boys in ow fam'ly. Ol'est one name Sherman. 'N'en
+come me; I'm Herman. 'N'en come him; he Verman. Sherman dead. Verman, he
+de littles' one.”
+
+“You goin' to live here?”
+
+“Umhuh. Done move in f'm way outen on a fahm.”
+
+He pointed to the north with his right hand, and Penrod's eyes opened
+wide as they followed the gesture. Herman had no forefinger on that
+hand.
+
+“Look there!” exclaimed Penrod. “You haven't got any finger!”
+
+“_I_ mum map,” said Verman, with egregious pride.
+
+“HE done 'at,” interpreted Herman, chuckling. “Yessuh; done chop 'er
+spang off, long 'go. He's a playin' wif a ax an' I lay my finguh on de
+do'-sill an' I say, 'Verman, chop 'er off!' So Verman he chop 'er right
+spang off up to de roots! Yessuh.”
+
+“What FOR?”
+
+“Jes' fo' nothin'.”
+
+“He hoe me hoo,” remarked Verman.
+
+“Yessuh, I tole him to,” said Herman, “an' he chop 'er off, an' ey ain't
+airy oth' one evuh grown on wheres de ole one use to grow. Nosuh!”
+
+“But what'd you tell him to do it for?”
+
+“Nothin'. I 'es' said it 'at way--an' he jes' chop er off!”
+
+Both brothers looked pleased and proud. Penrod's profound interest was
+flatteringly visible, a tribute to their unusualness.
+
+“Hem bow goy,” suggested Verman eagerly.
+
+“Aw ri',” said Herman. “Ow sistuh Queenie, she a growed-up woman; she
+got a goituh.”
+
+“Got a what?”
+
+“Goituh. Swellin' on her neck--grea' big swellin'. She heppin' mammy
+move in now. You look in de front-room winduh wheres she sweepin'; you
+kin see it on her.”
+
+Penrod looked in the window and was rewarded by a fine view of Queenie's
+goitre. He had never before seen one, and only the lure of further
+conversation on the part of Verman brought him from the window.
+
+“Verman say tell you 'bout pappy,” explained Herman. “Mammy an' Queenie
+move in town an' go git de house all fix up befo' pappy git out.”
+
+“Out of where?”
+
+“Jail. Pappy cut a man, an' de police done kep' him in jail evuh sense
+Chris'mus-time; but dey goin' tuhn him loose ag'in nex' week.”
+
+“What'd he cut the other man with?”
+
+“Wif a pitchfawk.”
+
+Penrod began to feel that a lifetime spent with this fascinating family
+were all too short. The brothers, glowing with amiability, were as
+enraptured as he. For the first time in their lives they moved in the
+rich glamour of sensationalism. Herman was prodigal of gesture with his
+right hand; and Verman, chuckling with delight, talked fluently,
+though somewhat consciously. They cheerfully agreed to keep the
+raccoon--already beginning to be mentioned as “our 'coon” by Penrod--in
+Mr. Schofield's empty stable, and, when the animal had been chained to
+the wall near the box of rats and supplied with a pan of fair water,
+they assented to their new friend's suggestion (inspired by a fine
+sense of the artistic harmonies) that the heretofore nameless pet be
+christened Sherman, in honour of their deceased relative.
+
+At this juncture was heard from the front yard the sound of that
+yodelling which is the peculiar accomplishment of those whose voices
+have not “changed.” Penrod yodelled a response; and Mr. Samuel Williams
+appeared, a large bundle under his arm.
+
+“Yay, Penrod!” was his greeting, casual enough from without; but, having
+entered, he stopped short and emitted a prodigious whistle. “YA-A-AY!”
+ he then shouted. “Look at the 'coon!”
+
+“I guess you better say, 'Look at the 'coon!'” Penrod returned proudly.
+“They's a good deal more'n him to look at, too. Talk some, Verman.”
+ Verman complied.
+
+Sam was warmly interested. “What'd you say his name was?” he asked.
+
+“Verman.”
+
+“How d'you spell it?”
+
+“V-e-r-m-a-n,” replied Penrod, having previously received this
+information from Herman.
+
+“Oh!” said Sam.
+
+“Point to sumpthing, Herman,” Penrod commanded, and Sam's excitement,
+when Herman pointed was sufficient to the occasion.
+
+Penrod, the discoverer, continued his exploitation of the manifold
+wonders of the Sherman, Herman, and Verman collection. With the air of
+a proprietor he escorted Sam into the alley for a good look at Queenie
+(who seemed not to care for her increasing celebrity) and proceeded to
+a dramatic climax--the recital of the episode of the pitchfork and its
+consequences.
+
+The cumulative effect was enormous, and could have but one possible
+result. The normal boy is always at least one half Barnum.
+
+“Let's get up a SHOW!”
+
+Penrod and Sam both claimed to have said it first, a question left
+unsettled in the ecstasies of hurried preparation. The bundle under
+Sam's arm, brought with no definite purpose, proved to have been
+an inspiration. It consisted of broad sheets of light yellow
+wrapping-paper, discarded by Sam's mother in her spring house-cleaning.
+There were half-filled cans and buckets of paint in the storeroom
+adjoining the carriage-house, and presently the side wall of the stable
+flamed information upon the passer-by from a great and spreading poster.
+
+“Publicity,” primal requisite of all theatrical and amphitheatrical
+enterprise thus provided, subsequent arrangements proceeded with a fury
+of energy which transformed the empty hayloft. True, it is impossible to
+say just what the hay-loft was transformed into, but history warrantably
+clings to the statement that it was transformed. Duke and Sherman were
+secured to the rear wall at a considerable distance from each other,
+after an exhibition of reluctance on the part of Duke, during which he
+displayed a nervous energy and agility almost miraculous in so small and
+middle-aged a dog. Benches were improvised for spectators; the rats
+were brought up; finally the rafters, corn-crib, and hay-chute were
+ornamented with flags and strips of bunting from Sam Williams'
+attic, Sam returning from the excursion wearing an old silk hat, and
+accompanied (on account of a rope) by a fine dachshund encountered on
+the highway. In the matter of personal decoration paint was generously
+used: an interpretation of the spiral, inclining to whites and greens,
+becoming brilliantly effective upon the dark facial backgrounds of
+Herman and Verman; while the countenances of Sam and Penrod were each
+supplied with the black moustache and imperial, lacking which, no
+professional showman can be esteemed conscientious.
+
+It was regretfully decided, in council, that no attempt be made to add
+Queenie to the list of exhibits, her brothers warmly declining to act as
+ambassadors in that cause. They were certain Queenie would not like
+the idea, they said, and Herman picturesquely described her activity
+on occasions when she had been annoyed by too much attention to her
+appearance. However, Penrod's disappointment was alleviated by an
+inspiration which came to him in a moment of pondering upon the
+dachshund, and the entire party went forth to add an enriching line to
+the poster.
+
+They found a group of seven, including two adults, already gathered in
+the street to read and admire this work.
+
+     SCHoFiELD & WiLLiAMS
+     BiG SHOW
+     ADMiSSioN 1 CENT oR 20 PiNS
+     MUSUEM oF CURioSiTES
+     Now GoiNG oN
+     SHERMAN HERMAN & VERMAN
+     THiER FATHERS iN JAiL STABED A
+     MAN WiTH A
+     PiTCHFORK
+     SHERMAN THE WiLD ANIMAL
+     CAPTURED iN AFRiCA
+     HERMAN THE ONE FiNGERED TATOOD
+     WILD MAN VERMAN THE SAVAGE TATOOD
+     WILD BoY TALKS ONLY iN HiS NAiTiVE
+     LANGUAGS.  Do NoT FAIL TO SEE DUKE
+     THE INDiAN DOG ALSO THE MiCHiGAN
+     TRAiNED RATS
+
+A heated argument took place between Sam and Penrod, the point at issue
+being settled, finally, by the drawing of straws; whereupon Penrod, with
+pardonable self-importance--in the presence of an audience now increased
+to nine--slowly painted the words inspired by the dachshund:
+
+     IMPoRTENT Do NoT MISS THE SoUTH
+     AMERiCAN DoG PART ALLIGATOR.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI THE NEW STAR
+
+Sam, Penrod, Herman, and Verman withdrew in considerable state from
+non-paying view, and, repairing to the hay-loft, declared the exhibition
+open to the public. Oral proclamation was made by Sam, and then the
+loitering multitude was enticed by the seductive strains of a band; the
+two partners performing upon combs and paper, Herman and Verman upon tin
+pans with sticks.
+
+The effect was immediate. Visitors appeared upon the stairway and sought
+admission. Herman and Verman took position among the exhibits, near
+the wall; Sam stood at the entrance, officiating as barker and
+ticket-seller; while Penrod, with debonair suavity, acted as curator,
+master of ceremonies, and lecturer. He greeted the first to enter with a
+courtly bow. They consisted of Miss Rennsdale and her nursery governess,
+and they paid spot cash for their admission.
+
+“Walk in, lay-deeze, walk right in--pray do not obstruck the
+passageway,” said Penrod, in a remarkable voice. “Pray be seated; there
+is room for each and all.”
+
+Miss Rennsdale and governess were followed by Mr. Georgie Bassett and
+baby sister (which proves the perfection of Georgie's character) and
+six or seven other neighbourhood children--a most satisfactory audience,
+although, subsequent to Miss Rennsdale and governess, admission was
+wholly by pin.
+
+“GEN-til-mun and LAY-deeze,” shouted Penrod, “I will first call your
+at-tain-shon to our genuine South American dog, part alligator!” He
+pointed to the dachshund, and added, in his ordinary tone, “That's him.”
+ Straightway reassuming the character of showman, he bellowed: “NEXT,
+you see Duke, the genuine, full-blooded Indian dog from the far Western
+Plains and Rocky Mountains. NEXT, the trained Michigan rats, captured
+way up there, and trained to jump and run all around the box at the--at
+the--at the slightest PRE-text!” He paused, partly to take breath and
+partly to enjoy his own surprised discovery that this phrase was in his
+vocabulary.
+
+“At the slightest PRE-text!” he repeated, and continued, suiting the
+action to the word: “I will now hammer upon the box and each and all may
+see these genuine full-blooded Michigan rats perform at the slightest
+PRE-text! There! (That's all they do now, but I and Sam are goin' to
+train 'em lots more before this afternoon.) GEN-til-mun and LAY-deeze I
+will kindly now call your at-tain-shon to Sherman, the wild animal
+from Africa, costing the lives of the wild trapper and many of his
+companions. NEXT, let me kindly interodoos Herman and Verman. Their
+father got mad and stuck his pitchfork right inside of another man,
+exactly as promised upon the advertisements outside the big tent, and
+got put in jail. Look at them well, gen-til-mun and lay-deeze, there is
+no extra charge, and RE-MEM-BUR you are each and all now looking at two
+wild, tattooed men which the father of is in jail. Point, Herman. Each
+and all will have a chance to see. Point to sumpthing else, Herman.
+This is the only genuine one-fingered tattooed wild man. Last on
+the programme, gen-til-mun and lay-deeze, we have Verman, the savage
+tattooed wild boy, that can't speak only his native foreign languages.
+Talk some, Verman.”
+
+Verman obliged and made an instantaneous hit. He was encored
+rapturously, again and again; and, thrilling with the unique pleasure of
+being appreciated and misunderstood at the same time, would have talked
+all day but too gladly. Sam Williams, however, with a true showman's
+foresight, whispered to Penrod, who rang down on the monologue.
+
+“GEN-til-mun and LAY-deeze, this closes our pufformance. Pray pass out
+quietly and with as little jostling as possible. As soon as you are all
+out there's goin' to be a new pufformance, and each and all are welcome
+at the same and simple price of admission. Pray pass out quietly and
+with as little jostling as possible. RE-MEM-BUR the price is only one
+cent, the tenth part of a dime, or twenty pins, no bent ones taken. Pray
+pass out quietly and with as little jostling as possible. The Schofield
+and Williams Military Band will play before each pufformance, and each
+and all are welcome for the same and simple price of admission. Pray
+pass out quietly and with as little jostling as possible.”
+
+Forthwith, the Schofield and Williams Military Band began a second
+overture, in which something vaguely like a tune was at times
+distinguishable; and all of the first audience returned, most of them
+having occupied the interval in hasty excursions for more pins; Miss
+Rennsdale and governess, however, again paying coin of the Republic and
+receiving deference and the best seats accordingly. And when a third
+performance found all of the same inveterate patrons once more crowding
+the auditorium, and seven recruits added, the pleasurable excitement of
+the partners in their venture will be understood by any one who has seen
+a metropolitan manager strolling about the foyer of his theatre some
+evening during the earlier stages of an assured “phenomenal run.”
+
+From the first, there was no question which feature of the entertainment
+was the attraction extraordinary: Verman--Verman, the savage tattooed
+wild boy, speaking only his native foreign languages--Verman was a
+triumph! Beaming, wreathed in smiles, melodious, incredibly fluent,
+he had but to open his lips and a dead hush fell upon the audience.
+Breathless, they leaned forward, hanging upon his every semi-syllable,
+and, when Penrod checked the flow, burst into thunders of applause,
+which Verman received with happy laughter.
+
+Alas! he delayed not o'er long to display all the egregiousness of a
+new star; but for a time there was no caprice of his too eccentric to
+be forgiven. During Penrod's lecture upon the other curios, the tattooed
+wild boy continually stamped his foot, grinned, and gesticulated,
+tapping his tiny chest, and pointing to himself as it were to say: “Wait
+for Me! I am the Big Show.” So soon they learn; so soon they learn! And
+(again alas!) this spoiled darling of public favour, like many another,
+was fated to know, in good time, the fickleness of that favour.
+
+But during all the morning performances he was the idol of his audience
+and looked it! The climax of his popularity came during the fifth
+overture of the Schofield and Williams Military Band, when the music
+was quite drowned in the agitated clamours of Miss Rennsdale, who was
+endeavouring to ascend the stairs in spite of the physical dissuasion of
+her governess.
+
+“I WON'T go home to lunch!” screamed Miss Rennsdale, her voice
+accompanied by a sound of ripping. “I WILL hear the tattooed wild boy
+talk some more! It's lovely--I WILL hear him talk! I WILL! I WILL! I
+want to listen to Verman--I WANT to--I WANT to----”
+
+Wailing, she was borne away--of her sex not the first to be fascinated
+by obscurity, nor the last to champion its eloquence.
+
+Verman was almost unendurable after this, but, like many, many other
+managers, Schofield and Williams restrained their choler, and even
+laughed fulsomely when their principal attraction essayed the role of a
+comedian in private, and capered and squawked in sheer, fatuous vanity.
+
+The first performance of the afternoon rivalled the successes of the
+morning, and although Miss Rennsdale was detained at home, thus drying
+up the single source of cash income developed before lunch, Maurice Levy
+appeared, escorting Marjorie Jones, and paid coin for two admissions,
+dropping the money into Sam's hand with a careless--nay, a
+contemptuous--gesture. At sight of Marjorie, Penrod Schofield flushed
+under his new moustache (repainted since noon) and lectured as he had
+never lectured before. A new grace invested his every gesture; a new
+sonorousness rang in his voice; a simple and manly pomposity marked
+his very walk as he passed from curio to curio. And when he fearlessly
+handled the box of rats and hammered upon it with cool insouciance, he
+beheld--for the first time in his life--a purl of admiration eddying in
+Marjorie's lovely eye, a certain softening of that eye. And then Verman
+spake and Penrod was forgotten. Marjorie's eye rested upon him no more.
+
+A heavily equipped chauffeur ascended the stairway, bearing the message
+that Mrs. Levy awaited her son and his lady. Thereupon, having devoured
+the last sound permitted (by the managers) to issue from Verman, Mr.
+Levy and Miss Jones departed to a real matinee at a real theatre, the
+limpid eyes of Marjorie looking back softly over her shoulder--but only
+at the tattooed wild boy. Nearly always it is woman who puts the irony
+into life.
+
+After this, perhaps because of sated curiosity, perhaps on account of a
+pin famine, the attendance began to languish. Only four responded to
+the next call of the band; the four dwindled to three; finally the
+entertainment was given for one blase auditor, and Schofield and
+Williams looked depressed. Then followed an interval when the band
+played in vain.
+
+About three o'clock Schofield and Williams were gloomily discussing
+various unpromising devices for startling the public into a renewal of
+interest, when another patron unexpectedly appeared and paid a cent for
+his admission. News of the Big Show and Museum of Curiosities had at
+last penetrated the far, cold spaces of interstellar niceness, for this
+new patron consisted of no less than Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior,
+escaped in a white “sailor suit” from the Manor during a period of
+severe maternal and tutorial preoccupation.
+
+He seated himself without parley, and the pufformance was offered for
+his entertainment with admirable conscientiousness. True to the Lady
+Clara caste and training, Roderick's pale, fat face expressed nothing
+except an impervious superiority and, as he sat, cold and unimpressed
+upon the front bench, like a large, white lump, it must be said that
+he made a discouraging audience “to play to.” He was not, however,
+unresponsive--far from it. He offered comment very chilling to the warm
+grandiloquence of the orator.
+
+“That's my uncle Ethelbert's dachshund,” he remarked, at the beginning
+of the lecture. “You better take him back if you don't want to get
+arrested.” And when Penrod, rather uneasily ignoring the interruption,
+proceeded to the exploitation of the genuine, full-blooded Indian dog,
+Duke, “Why don't you try to give that old dog away?” asked Roderick.
+“You couldn't sell him.”
+
+“My papa would buy me a lots better 'coon than that,” was the
+information volunteered a little later, “only I wouldn't want the nasty
+old thing.”
+
+Herman of the missing finger obtained no greater indulgence. “Pooh!”
+ said Roderick. “We have two fox-terriers in our stables that took prizes
+at the kennel show, and their tails were BIT off. There's a man that
+always bites fox-terriers' tails off.”
+
+“Oh, my gosh, what a lie!” exclaimed Sam Williams ignorantly.
+
+“Go on with the show whether he likes it or not, Penrod. He's paid his
+money.”
+
+Verman, confident in his own singular powers, chuckled openly at the
+failure of the other attractions to charm the frosty visitor, and,
+when his turn came, poured forth a torrent of conversation which was
+straightway damned.
+
+“Rotten,” said Mr. Bitts languidly. “Anybody could talk like that. _I_
+could do it if I wanted to.”
+
+Verman paused suddenly.
+
+“YES, you could!” exclaimed Penrod, stung. “Let's hear you do it, then.”
+
+“Yessir!” the other partner shouted. “Let's just hear you DO it!”
+
+“I said I could if I wanted to,” responded Roderick. “I didn't say I
+WOULD.”
+
+“Yay! Knows he can't!” sneered Sam.
+
+“I can, too, if I try.”
+
+“Well, let's hear you try!”
+
+So challenged, the visitor did try, but, in the absence of an impartial
+jury, his effort was considered so pronounced a failure that he was
+howled down, derided, and mocked with great clamours.
+
+“Anyway,” said Roderick, when things had quieted down, “if I couldn't
+get up a better show than this I'd sell out and leave town.”
+
+Not having enough presence of mind to inquire what he would sell out,
+his adversaries replied with mere formless yells of scorn.
+
+“I could get up a better show than this with my left hand,” Roderick
+asserted.
+
+“Well, what would you have in your ole show?” asked Penrod,
+condescending to language.
+
+“That's all right, what I'd HAVE. I'd have enough!”
+
+“You couldn't get Herman and Verman in your ole show.”
+
+“No, and I wouldn't want 'em, either!”
+
+“Well, what WOULD you have?” insisted Penrod derisively. “You'd have to
+have SUMPTHING--you couldn't be a show yourself!”
+
+“How do YOU know?” This was but meandering while waiting for ideas, and
+evoked another yell.
+
+“You think you could be a show all by yourself?” demanded Penrod.
+
+“How do YOU know I couldn't?”
+
+Two white boys and two black boys shrieked their scorn of the boaster.
+
+“I could, too!” Roderick raised his voice to a sudden howl, obtaining a
+hearing.
+
+“Well, why don't you tell us how?”
+
+“Well, _I_ know HOW, all right,” said Roderick. “If anybody asks you,
+you can just tell him I know HOW, all right.”
+
+“Why, you can't DO anything,” Sam began argumentatively. “You talk
+about being a show all by yourself; what could you try to do? Show us
+sumpthing you can do.”
+
+“I didn't say I was going to DO anything,” returned the badgered one,
+still evading.
+
+“Well, then, how'd you BE a show?” Penrod demanded. “WE got a show here,
+even if Herman didn't point or Verman didn't talk. Their father stabbed
+a man with a pitchfork, I guess, didn't he?”
+
+“How do _I_ know?”
+
+“Well, I guess he's in jail, ain't he?”
+
+“Well, what if their father is in jail? I didn't say he wasn't, did I?”
+
+“Well, YOUR father ain't in jail, is he?”
+
+“Well, I never said he was, did I?”
+
+“Well, then,” continued Penrod, “how could you be a----” He stopped
+abruptly, staring at Roderick, the birth of an idea plainly visible in
+his altered expression. He had suddenly remembered his intention to
+ask Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, about Rena Magsworth, and this
+recollection collided in his mind with the irritation produced by
+Roderick's claiming some mysterious attainment which would warrant his
+setting up as a show in his single person. Penrod's whole manner changed
+instantly.
+
+“Roddy,” he asked, almost overwhelmed by a prescience of something vast
+and magnificent, “Roddy, are you any relation of Rena Magsworth?”
+
+Roderick had never heard of Rena Magsworth, although a concentration
+of the sentence yesterday pronounced upon her had burned, black and
+horrific, upon the face of every newspaper in the country. He was not
+allowed to read the journals of the day and his family's indignation
+over the sacrilegious coincidence of the name had not been expressed in
+his presence. But he saw that it was an awesome name to Penrod Schofield
+and Samuel Williams. Even Herman and Verman, though lacking many
+educational advantages on account of a long residence in the country,
+were informed on the subject of Rena Magsworth through hearsay, and they
+joined in the portentous silence.
+
+“Roddy,” repeated Penrod, “honest, is Rena Magsworth some relation of
+yours?”
+
+There is no obsession more dangerous to its victims than a conviction
+especially an inherited one--of superiority: this world is so full
+of Missourians. And from his earliest years Roderick Magsworth Bitts,
+Junior, had been trained to believe in the importance of the Magsworth
+family. At every meal he absorbed a sense of Magsworth greatness, and
+yet, in his infrequent meetings with persons of his own age and sex,
+he was treated as negligible. Now, dimly, he perceived that there was
+a Magsworth claim of some sort which was impressive, even to boys.
+Magsworth blood was the essential of all true distinction in the world,
+he knew. Consequently, having been driven into a cul-de-sac, as a result
+of flagrant and unfounded boasting, he was ready to take advantage of
+what appeared to be a triumphal way out.
+
+“Roddy,” said Penrod again, with solemnity, “is Rena Magsworth some
+relation of yours?”
+
+“IS she, Roddy?” asked Sam, almost hoarsely.
+
+“She's my aunt!” shouted Roddy.
+
+Silence followed. Sam and Penrod, spellbound, gazed upon Roderick
+Magsworth Bitts, Junior. So did Herman and Verman. Roddy's staggering
+lie had changed the face of things utterly. No one questioned it; no one
+realized that it was much too good to be true.
+
+“Roddy,” said Penrod, in a voice tremulous with hope, “Roddy, will you
+join our show?”
+
+Roddy joined.
+
+Even he could see that the offer implied his being starred as the
+paramount attraction of a new order of things. It was obvious that he
+had swelled out suddenly, in the estimation of the other boys, to that
+importance which he had been taught to believe his native gift and
+natural right. The sensation was pleasant. He had often been treated
+with effusion by grown-up callers and by acquaintances of his mothers
+and sisters; he had heard ladies speak of him as “charming” and “that
+delightful child,” and little girls had sometimes shown him deference,
+but until this moment no boy had ever allowed him, for one moment, to
+presume even to equality. Now, in a trice, he was not only admitted
+to comradeship, but patently valued as something rare and sacred to be
+acclaimed and pedestalled. In fact, the very first thing that Schofield
+and Williams did was to find a box for him to stand upon.
+
+The misgivings roused in Roderick's bosom by the subsequent activities
+of the firm were not bothersome enough to make him forego his prominence
+as Exhibit A. He was not a “quick-minded” boy, and it was long (and
+much happened) before he thoroughly comprehended the causes of his new
+celebrity. He had a shadowy feeling that if the affair came to be heard
+of at home it might not be liked, but, intoxicated by the glamour and
+bustle which surround a public character, he made no protest. On the
+contrary, he entered whole-heartedly into the preparations for the
+new show. Assuming, with Sam's assistance, a blue moustache and
+“side-burns,” he helped in the painting of a new poster, which,
+supplanting the old one on the wall of the stable facing the
+cross-street, screamed bloody murder at the passers in that rather
+populous thoroughfare.
+
+     SCHoFiELD & WiLLiAMS
+     NEW BIG SHoW
+     RoDERiCK MAGSWoRTH BiTTS JR
+     ONLY LiViNG NEPHEW
+     oF
+     RENA MAGSWORTH
+     THE FAMOS
+     MUDERESS GoiNG To BE HUNG
+     NEXT JULY KiLED EiGHT PEOPLE
+     PUT ARSiNECK iN THiER MiLK ALSO
+     SHERMAN HERMAN AND VERMAN
+     THE MiCHiGAN RATS DOG PART
+     ALLiGATOR DUKE THE GENUiNE
+     InDiAN DoG ADMISSioN 1 CENT oR
+     20 PINS SAME AS BEFORE Do NoT
+     MISS THIS CHANSE TO SEE RoDERICK
+     ONLY LiViNG NEPHEW oF RENA
+     MAGSWORTH THE GREAT FAMOS
+     MUDERESS
+     GoiNG To BE
+     HUNG
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII RETIRING FROM THE SHOW-BUSINESS
+
+Megaphones were constructed out of heavy wrapping-paper, and Penrod,
+Sam, and Herman set out in different directions, delivering vocally
+the inflammatory proclamation of the poster to a large section of the
+residential quarter, and leaving Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, with
+Verman in the loft, shielded from all deadhead eyes. Upon the return
+of the heralds, the Schofield and Williams Military Band played
+deafeningly, and an awakened public once more thronged to fill the
+coffers of the firm.
+
+Prosperity smiled again. The very first audience after the acquisition
+of Roderick was larger than the largest of the morning. Master
+Bitts--the only exhibit placed upon a box--was a supercurio. All eyes
+fastened upon him and remained, hungrily feasting, throughout Penrod's
+luminous oration.
+
+But the glory of one light must ever be the dimming of another. We dwell
+in a vale of seesaws--and cobwebs spin fastest upon laurel. Verman, the
+tattooed wild boy, speaking only in his native foreign languages, Verman
+the gay, Verman the caperer, capered no more; he chuckled no more, he
+beckoned no more, nor tapped his chest, nor wreathed his idolatrous face
+in smiles. Gone, all gone, were his little artifices for attracting the
+general attention to himself; gone was every engaging mannerism which
+had endeared him to the mercurial public. He squatted against the wall
+and glowered at the new sensation. It was the old story--the old,
+old story of too much temperament: Verman was suffering from artistic
+jealousy.
+
+The second audience contained a cash-paying adult, a spectacled young
+man whose poignant attention was very flattering. He remained after the
+lecture, and put a few questions to Roddy, which were answered rather
+confusedly upon promptings from Penrod. The young man went away without
+having stated the object of his interrogations, but it became quite
+plain, later in the day. This same object caused the spectacled young
+man to make several brief but stimulating calls directly after leaving
+the Schofield and Williams Big Show, and the consequences thereof
+loitered not by the wayside.
+
+The Big Show was at high tide. Not only was the auditorium filled
+and throbbing; there was an indubitable line--by no means wholly
+juvenile--waiting for admission to the next pufformance. A group stood
+in the street examining the poster earnestly as it glowed in the long,
+slanting rays of the westward sun, and people in automobiles and other
+vehicles had halted wheel in the street to read the message so piquantly
+given to the world. These were the conditions when a crested victoria
+arrived at a gallop, and a large, chastely magnificent and highly
+flushed woman descended, and progressed across the yard with an air of
+violence.
+
+At sight of her, the adults of the waiting line hastily disappeared,
+and most of the pausing vehicles moved instantly on their way. She was
+followed by a stricken man in livery.
+
+The stairs to the auditorium were narrow and steep; Mrs. Roderick
+Magsworth Bitts was of a stout favour; and the voice of Penrod was
+audible during the ascent.
+
+“RE-MEM-BUR, gentilmun and lay-deeze, each and all are now gazing upon
+Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, the only living nephew of the great
+Rena Magsworth. She stuck ars'nic in the milk of eight separate and
+distinck people to put in their coffee and each and all of 'em died. The
+great ars'nic murderess, Rena Magsworth, gentilmun and lay-deeze,
+and Roddy's her only living nephew. She's a relation of all the Bitts
+family, but he's her one and only living nephew. RE-MEM-BUR! Next July
+she's goin' to be hung, and, each and all, you now see before you----”
+
+Penrod paused abruptly, seeing something before himself--the august and
+awful presence which filled the entryway. And his words (it should be
+related) froze upon his lips.
+
+Before HERSELF, Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts saw her son--her
+scion--wearing a moustache and sideburns of blue, and perched upon a box
+flanked by Sherman and Verman, the Michigan rats, the Indian dog Duke,
+Herman, and the dog part alligator.
+
+Roddy, also, saw something before himself. It needed no prophet to
+read the countenance of the dread apparition in the entryway. His mouth
+opened--remained open--then filled to capacity with a calamitous sound
+of grief not unmingled with apprehension.
+
+Penrod's reason staggered under the crisis. For a horrible moment he saw
+Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts approaching like some fatal mountain in
+avalanche. She seemed to grow larger and redder; lightnings played about
+her head; he had a vague consciousness of the audience spraying out
+in flight, of the squealings, tramplings and dispersals of a stricken
+field. The mountain was close upon him----
+
+He stood by the open mouth of the hay-chute which went through the floor
+to the manger below. Penrod also went through the floor. He propelled
+himself into the chute and shot down, but not quite to the manger, for
+Mr. Samuel Williams had thoughtfully stepped into the chute a moment in
+advance of his partner. Penrod lit upon Sam.
+
+Catastrophic noises resounded in the loft; volcanoes seemed to romp upon
+the stairway.
+
+There ensued a period when only a shrill keening marked the passing of
+Roderick as he was borne to the tumbril. Then all was silence.
+
+
+. . . Sunset, striking through a western window, rouged the walls of
+the Schofields' library, where gathered a joint family council and
+court martial of four--Mrs. Schofield, Mr. Schofield, and Mr. and Mrs.
+Williams, parents of Samuel of that ilk. Mr. Williams read aloud a
+conspicuous passage from the last edition of the evening paper:
+
+“Prominent people here believed close relations of woman sentenced to
+hang. Angry denial by Mrs. R. Magsworth Bitts. Relationship admitted by
+younger member of family. His statement confirmed by boy-friends----”
+
+“Don't!” said Mrs. Williams, addressing her husband vehemently. “We've
+all read it a dozen times. We've got plenty of trouble on our hands
+without hearing THAT again!”
+
+Singularly enough, Mrs. Williams did not look troubled; she looked as
+if she were trying to look troubled. Mrs. Schofield wore a similar
+expression. So did Mr. Schofield. So did Mr. Williams.
+
+“What did she say when she called YOU up?” Mrs. Schofield inquired
+breathlessly of Mrs. Williams.
+
+“She could hardly speak at first, and then when she did talk, she talked
+so fast I couldn't understand most of it, and----”
+
+“It was just the same when she tried to talk to me,” said Mrs.
+Schofield, nodding.
+
+“I never did hear any one in such a state before,” continued Mrs.
+Williams. “So furious----”
+
+“Quite justly, of course,” said Mrs. Schofield.
+
+“Of course. And she said Penrod and Sam had enticed Roderick away from
+home--usually he's not allowed to go outside the yard except with his
+tutor or a servant--and had told him to say that horrible creature was
+his aunt----”
+
+“How in the world do you suppose Sam and Penrod ever thought of such
+a thing as THAT!” exclaimed Mrs. Schofield. “It must have been made up
+just for their 'show.' Della says there were just STREAMS going in and
+out all day. Of course it wouldn't have happened, but this was the day
+Margaret and I spend every month in the country with Aunt Sarah, and I
+didn't DREAM----”
+
+“She said one thing I thought rather tactless,” interrupted Mrs.
+Williams. “Of course we must allow for her being dreadfully excited and
+wrought up, but I do think it wasn't quite delicate in her, and she's
+usually the very soul of delicacy. She said that Roderick had NEVER been
+allowed to associate with--common boys----”
+
+“Meaning Sam and Penrod,” said Mrs. Schofield. “Yes, she said that to
+me, too.”
+
+“She said that the most awful thing about it,” Mrs. Williams went on,
+“was that, though she's going to prosecute the newspapers, many people
+would always believe the story, and----”
+
+“Yes, I imagine they will,” said Mrs. Schofield musingly. “Of course you
+and I and everybody who really knows the Bitts and Magsworth families
+understand the perfect absurdity of it; but I suppose there are ever so
+many who'll believe it, no matter what the Bittses and Magsworths say.”
+
+“Hundreds and hundreds!” said Mrs. Williams. “I'm afraid it will be a
+great come-down for them.”
+
+“I'm afraid so,” said Mrs. Schofield gently. “A very great one--yes, a
+very, very great one.”
+
+“Well,” observed Mrs. Williams, after a thoughtful pause, “there's only
+one thing to be done, and I suppose it had better be done right away.”
+
+She glanced toward the two gentlemen.
+
+“Certainly,” Mr. Schofield agreed. “But where ARE they?”
+
+“Have you looked in the stable?” asked his wife.
+
+“I searched it. They've probably started for the far West.”
+
+“Did you look in the sawdust-box?”
+
+“No, I didn't.”
+
+“Then that's where they are.”
+
+Thus, in the early twilight, the now historic stable was approached by
+two fathers charged to do the only thing to be done. They entered the
+storeroom.
+
+“Penrod!” said Mr. Schofield.
+
+“Sam!” said Mr. Williams.
+
+Nothing disturbed the twilight hush.
+
+But by means of a ladder, brought from the carriage-house, Mr. Schofield
+mounted to the top of the sawdust-box. He looked within, and discerned
+the dim outlines of three quiet figures, the third being that of a small
+dog.
+
+The two boys rose, upon command, descended the ladder after Mr.
+Schofield, bringing Duke with them, and stood before the authors of
+their being, who bent upon them sinister and threatening brows. With
+hanging heads and despondent countenances, each still ornamented with a
+moustache and an imperial, Penrod and Sam awaited sentence.
+
+This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward
+turn out to have been a crime--he never knows.
+
+And punishment and clemency are alike inexplicable.
+
+Mr. Williams took his son by the ear.
+
+“You march home!” he commanded.
+
+Sam marched, not looking back, and his father followed the small figure
+implacably.
+
+“You goin' to whip me?” quavered Penrod, alone with Justice.
+
+“Wash your face at that hydrant,” said his father sternly.
+
+About fifteen minutes later, Penrod, hurriedly entering the corner drug
+store, two blocks distant, was astonished to perceive a familiar form at
+the soda counter.
+
+“Yay, Penrod,” said Sam Williams. “Want some sody? Come on. He didn't
+lick me. He didn't do anything to me at all. He gave me a quarter.”
+
+“So'd mine,” said Penrod.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII MUSIC
+
+Boyhood is the longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the
+school-year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living through them is
+like waiting for the millennium. But they do pass, somehow, and at last
+there came a day when Penrod was one of a group that capered out
+from the gravelled yard of “Ward School, Nomber Seventh,” carolling a
+leave-taking of the institution, of their instructress, and not even
+forgetting Mr. Capps, the janitor.
+
+“Good-bye, teacher! Good-bye, school! Good-bye, Cappsie, dern ole fool!”
+
+Penrod sang the loudest. For every boy, there is an age when he “finds
+his voice.” Penrod's had not “changed,” but he had found it. Inevitably
+that thing had come upon his family and the neighbours; and his father,
+a somewhat dyspeptic man, quoted frequently the expressive words of
+the “Lady of Shalott,” but there were others whose sufferings were as
+poignant.
+
+Vacation-time warmed the young of the world to pleasant languor; and
+a morning came that was like a brightly coloured picture in a child's
+fairy story. Miss Margaret Schofield, reclining in a hammock upon the
+front porch, was beautiful in the eyes of a newly made senior, well
+favoured and in fair raiment, beside her. A guitar rested lightly upon
+his knee, and he was trying to play--a matter of some difficulty, as
+the floor of the porch also seemed inclined to be musical. From directly
+under his feet came a voice of song, shrill, loud, incredibly piercing
+and incredibly flat, dwelling upon each syllable with incomprehensible
+reluctance to leave it.
+
+     “I have lands and earthly pow-wur.
+     I'd give all for a now-wur,
+     Whi-ilst setting at MY-Y-Y dear old mother's knee-ee,
+     So-o-o rem-mem-bur whilst you're young----”
+
+Miss Schofield stamped heartily upon the musical floor.
+
+“It's Penrod,” she explained. “The lattice at the end of the porch is
+loose, and he crawls under and comes out all bugs. He's been having
+a dreadful singing fit lately--running away to picture shows and
+vaudeville, I suppose.”
+
+Mr. Robert Williams looked upon her yearningly. He touched a thrilling
+chord on his guitar and leaned nearer. “But you said you have missed
+me,” he began. “I----”
+
+The voice of Penrod drowned all other sounds.
+
+     “So-o-o rem-mem-bur, whi-i-ilst you're young,
+     That the day-a-ys to you will come,
+     When you're o-o-old and only in the way,
+     Do not scoff at them BEE-cause----”
+
+“PENROD!” Miss Schofield stamped again.
+
+“You DID say you'd missed me,” said Mr. Robert Williams, seizing
+hurriedly upon the silence. “Didn't you say----”
+
+A livelier tune rose upward.
+
+     “Oh, you talk about your fascinating beauties,
+     Of your dem-O-zells, your belles,
+     But the littil dame I met, while in the city,
+     She's par excellaws the queen of all the swells.
+     She's sweeter far----”
+
+Margaret rose and jumped up and down repeatedly in a well-calculated
+area, whereupon the voice of Penrod cried chokedly, “QUIT that!” and
+there were subterranean coughings and sneezings.
+
+“You want to choke a person to death?” he inquired severely, appearing
+at the end of the porch, a cobweb upon his brow. And, continuing, he
+put into practice a newly acquired phrase, “You better learn to be more
+considerick of other people's comfort.”
+
+Slowly and grievedly he withdrew, passed to the sunny side of the house,
+reclined in the warm grass beside his wistful Duke, and presently sang
+again.
+
+     “She's sweeter far than the flower I named her after,
+     And the memery of her smile it haunts me YET!
+     When in after years the moon is soffly beamun'
+     And at eve I smell the smell of mignonette
+     I will re-CALL that----”
+
+“Pen-ROD!”
+
+Mr. Schofield appeared at an open window upstairs, a book in his hand.
+
+“Stop it!” he commanded. “Can't I stay home with a headache ONE morning
+from the office without having to listen to--I never DID hear such
+squawking!” He retired from the window, having too impulsively called
+upon his Maker. Penrod, shocked and injured, entered the house, but
+presently his voice was again audible as far as the front porch. He was
+holding converse with his mother, somewhere in the interior.
+
+“Well, what of it? Sam Williams told me his mother said if Bob ever did
+think of getting married to Margaret, his mother said she'd like to know
+what in the name o' goodness they expect to----”
+
+Bang! Margaret thought it better to close the front door.
+
+The next minute Penrod opened it. “I suppose you want the whole family
+to get a sunstroke,” he said reprovingly. “Keepin' every breath of air
+out o' the house on a day like this!”
+
+And he sat down implacably in the doorway.
+
+The serious poetry of all languages has omitted the little brother;
+and yet he is one of the great trials of love--the immemorial burden of
+courtship. Tragedy should have found place for him, but he has been left
+to the haphazard vignettist of Grub Street. He is the grave and
+real menace of lovers; his head is sacred and terrible, his power
+illimitable. There is one way--only one--to deal with him; but Robert
+Williams, having a brother of Penrod's age, understood that way.
+
+Robert had one dollar in the world. He gave it to Penrod immediately.
+
+Enslaved forever, the new Rockefeller rose and went forth upon the
+highway, an overflowing heart bursting the floodgates of song.
+
+     “In her eyes the light of love was soffly gleamun',
+     So sweetlay,
+     So neatlay.
+     On the banks the moon's soff light was brightly streamun',
+     Words of love I then spoke TO her.
+     She was purest of the PEW-er:
+     'Littil sweetheart, do not sigh,
+     Do not weep and do not cry.
+     I will build a littil cottige just for yew-EW-EW and I.'”
+
+In fairness, it must be called to mind that boys older than Penrod have
+these wellings of pent melody; a wife can never tell when she is to
+undergo a musical morning, and even the golden wedding brings her no
+security, a man of ninety is liable to bust-loose in song, any time.
+
+Invalids murmured pitifully as Penrod came within hearing; and people
+trying to think cursed the day that they were born, when he went
+shrilling by. His hands in his pockets, his shining face uplifted to the
+sky of June, he passed down the street, singing his way into the heart's
+deepest hatred of all who heard him.
+
+     “One evuning I was sturow-ling
+     Midst the city of the DEAD,
+     I viewed where all a-round me
+     Their PEACE-full graves was SPREAD.
+     But that which touched me mostlay----”
+
+He had reached his journey's end, a junk-dealer's shop wherein lay
+the long-desired treasure of his soul--an accordion which might
+have possessed a high quality of interest for an antiquarian, being
+unquestionably a ruin, beautiful in decay, and quite beyond the
+sacrilegious reach of the restorer. But it was still able to disgorge
+sounds--loud, strange, compelling sounds, which could be heard for a
+remarkable distance in all directions; and it had one rich calf-like
+tone that had gone to Penrod's heart. He obtained the instrument for
+twenty-two cents, a price long since agreed upon with the junk-dealer,
+who falsely claimed a loss of profit, Shylock that he was! He had found
+the wreck in an alley.
+
+With this purchase suspended from his shoulder by a faded green cord,
+Penrod set out in a somewhat homeward direction, but not by the route
+he had just travelled, though his motive for the change was not
+humanitarian. It was his desire to display himself thus troubadouring
+to the gaze of Marjorie Jones. Heralding his advance by continuous
+experiments in the music of the future, he pranced upon his blithesome
+way, the faithful Duke at his heels. (It was easier for Duke than it
+would have been for a younger dog, because, with advancing age, he had
+begun to grow a little deaf.)
+
+Turning the corner nearest to the glamoured mansion of the Joneses,
+the boy jongleur came suddenly face to face with Marjorie, and, in
+the delicious surprise of the encounter, ceased to play, his hands, in
+agitation, falling from the instrument.
+
+Bareheaded, the sunshine glorious upon her amber curls, Marjorie was
+strolling hand-in-hand with her baby brother, Mitchell, four years
+old. She wore pink that day--unforgettable pink, with a broad, black
+patent-leather belt, shimmering reflections dancing upon its surface.
+How beautiful she was! How sacred the sweet little baby brother, whose
+privilege it was to cling to that small hand, delicately powdered with
+freckles.
+
+“Hello, Marjorie,” said Penrod, affecting carelessness.
+
+“Hello!” said Marjorie, with unexpected cordiality. She bent over her
+baby brother with motherly affectations. “Say 'howdy' to the gentymuns,
+Mitchy-Mitch,” she urged sweetly, turning him to face Penrod.
+
+“WON'T!” said Mitchy-Mitch, and, to emphasize his refusal, kicked the
+gentymuns upon the shin.
+
+Penrod's feelings underwent instant change, and in the sole occupation
+of disliking Mitchy-Mitch, he wasted precious seconds which might have
+been better employed in philosophic consideration of the startling
+example, just afforded, of how a given law operates throughout the
+universe in precisely the same manner perpetually. Mr. Robert Williams
+would have understood this, easily.
+
+“Oh, oh!” Marjorie cried, and put Mitchy-Mitch behind her with too much
+sweetness. “Maurice Levy's gone to Atlantic City with his mamma,” she
+remarked conversationally, as if the kicking incident were quite closed.
+
+“That's nothin',” returned Penrod, keeping his eye uneasily
+upon Mitchy-Mitch. “I know plenty people been better places than
+that--Chicago and everywhere.”
+
+There was unconscious ingratitude in his low rating of Atlantic City,
+for it was largely to the attractions of that resort he owed Miss Jones'
+present attitude of friendliness.
+
+Of course, too, she was curious about the accordion. It would be
+dastardly to hint that she had noticed a paper bag which bulged
+the pocket of Penrod's coat, and yet this bag was undeniably
+conspicuous--“and children are very like grown people sometimes!”
+
+Penrod brought forth the bag, purchased on the way at a drug store, and
+till this moment UNOPENED, which expresses in a word the depth of his
+sentiment for Marjorie. It contained an abundant fifteen-cents' worth of
+lemon drops, jaw-breakers, licorice sticks, cinnamon drops, and shopworn
+choclate creams.
+
+“Take all you want,” he said, with off-hand generosity.
+
+“Why, Penrod Schofield,” exclaimed the wholly thawed damsel, “you nice
+boy!”
+
+“Oh, that's nothin',” he returned airily. “I got a good deal of money,
+nowadays.”
+
+“Where from?”
+
+“Oh--just around.” With a cautious gesture he offered a jaw-breaker to
+Mitchy-Mitch, who snatched it indignantly and set about its absorption
+without delay.
+
+“Can you play on that?” asked Marjorie, with some difficulty, her cheeks
+being rather too hilly for conversation.
+
+“Want to hear me?”
+
+She nodded, her eyes sweet with anticipation.
+
+This was what he had come for. He threw back his head, lifted his eyes
+dreamily, as he had seen real musicians lift theirs, and distended the
+accordion preparing to produce the wonderful calf-like noise which was
+the instrument's great charm.
+
+But the distention evoked a long wail which was at once drowned in
+another one.
+
+“Ow! Owowaoh! Wowohah! WaowWOW!” shrieked Mitchy-Mitch and the accordion
+together.
+
+Mitchy-Mitch, to emphasize his disapproval of the accordion, opening his
+mouth still wider, lost therefrom the jaw-breaker, which rolled in the
+dust. Weeping, he stooped to retrieve it, and Marjorie, to prevent him,
+hastily set her foot upon it. Penrod offered another jaw-breaker; but
+Mitchy-Mitch struck it from his hand, desiring the former, which had
+convinced him of its sweetness.
+
+Marjorie moved inadvertently; whereupon Mitchy-Mitch pounced upon the
+remains of his jaw-breaker and restored them, with accretions, to his
+mouth. His sister, uttering a cry of horror, sprang to the rescue,
+assisted by Penrod, whom she prevailed upon to hold Mitchy-Mitch's mouth
+open while she excavated. This operation being completed, and Penrod's
+right thumb severely bitten, Mitchy-Mitch closed his eyes tightly,
+stamped, squealed, bellowed, wrung his hands, and then, unexpectedly,
+kicked Penrod again.
+
+Penrod put a hand in his pocket and drew forth a copper two-cent piece,
+large, round, and fairly bright.
+
+He gave it to Mitchy-Mitch.
+
+Mitchy-Mitch immediately stopped crying and gazed upon his benefactor
+with the eyes of a dog.
+
+This world!
+
+Thereafter did Penrod--with complete approval from Mitchy-Mitch--play
+the accordion for his lady to his heart's content, and hers. Never had
+he so won upon her; never had she let him feel so close to her before.
+They strolled up and down upon the sidewalk, eating, one thought between
+them, and soon she had learned to play the accordion almost as well as
+he. So passed a happy hour, which the Good King Rene of Anjou would have
+envied them, while Mitchy-Mitch made friends with Duke, romped about his
+sister and her swain, and clung to the hand of the latter, at intervals,
+with fondest affection and trust.
+
+The noon whistles failed to disturb this little Arcady; only the
+sound of Mrs. Jones' voice for the third time summoning Marjorie and
+Mitchy-Mitch to lunch--sent Penrod on his way.
+
+“I could come back this afternoon, I guess,” he said, in parting.
+
+“I'm not goin' to be here. I'm goin' to Baby Rennsdale's party.”
+
+Penrod looked blank, as she intended he should. Having thus satisfied
+herself, she added:
+
+“There aren't goin' to be any boys there.”
+
+He was instantly radiant again.
+
+“Marjorie----”
+
+“Hum?”
+
+“Do you wish I was goin' to be there?”
+
+She looked shy, and turned away her head.
+
+“MARJORIE JONES!” (This was a voice from home.) “HOW MANY MORE TIMES
+SHALL I HAVE TO CALL YOU?”
+
+Marjorie moved away, her face still hidden from Penrod.
+
+“Do you?” he urged.
+
+At the gate, she turned quickly toward him, and said over her shoulder,
+all in a breath: “Yes! Come again to-morrow morning and I'll be on the
+corner. Bring your 'cordion!”
+
+And she ran into the house, Mitchy-Mitch waving a loving hand to the boy
+on the sidewalk until the front door closed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX THE INNER BOY
+
+Penrod went home in splendour, pretending that he and Duke were a long
+procession; and he made enough noise to render the auricular part of the
+illusion perfect. His own family were already at the lunch-table when he
+arrived, and the parade halted only at the door of the dining-room.
+
+“Oh SOMETHING!” shouted Mr. Schofield, clasping his bilious brow with
+both hands. “Stop that noise! Isn't it awful enough for you to SING? Sit
+DOWN! Not with that thing on! Take that green rope off your shoulder!
+Now take that thing out of the dining-room and throw it in the ash-can!
+Where did you get it?”
+
+“Where did I get what, papa?” asked Penrod meekly, depositing the
+accordion in the hall just outside the dining-room door.
+
+“That da--that third-hand concertina.”
+
+“It's a 'cordian,” said Penrod, taking his place at the table, and
+noticing that both Margaret and Mr. Robert Williams (who happened to be
+a guest) were growing red.
+
+“I don't care what you call it,” said Mr. Schofield irritably. “I want
+to know where you got it.”
+
+Penrod's eyes met Margaret's: hers had a strained expression.
+
+She very slightly shook her head. Penrod sent Mr. Williams a grateful
+look, and might have been startled if he could have seen himself in a
+mirror at that moment; for he regarded Mitchy-Mitch with concealed but
+vigorous aversion and the resemblance would have horrified him.
+
+“A man gave it to me,” he answered gently, and was rewarded by the
+visibly regained ease of his patron's manner, while Margaret leaned back
+in her chair and looked at her brother with real devotion.
+
+“I should think he'd have been glad to,” said Mr. Schofield. “Who was
+he?”
+
+“Sir?” In spite of the candy which he had consumed in company with
+Marjorie and Mitchy-Mitch, Penrod had begun to eat lobster croquettes
+earnestly.
+
+“Who WAS he?”
+
+“Who do you mean, papa?”
+
+“The man that gave you that ghastly Thing!”
+
+“Yessir. A man gave it to me.”
+
+“I say, Who WAS he?” shouted Mr. Schofield.
+
+“Well, I was just walking along, and the man came up to me--it was right
+down in front of Colgate's, where most of the paint's rubbed off the
+fence----”
+
+“Penrod!” The father used his most dangerous tone.
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“Who was the man that gave you the concertina?”
+
+“I don't know. I was walking along----”
+
+“You never saw him before?”
+
+“No, sir. I was just walk----”
+
+“That will do,” said Mr. Schofield, rising. “I suppose every family has
+its secret enemies and this was one of ours. I must ask to be excused!”
+
+With that, he went out crossly, stopping in the hall a moment before
+passing beyond hearing. And, after lunch, Penrod sought in vain for his
+accordion; he even searched the library where his father sat reading,
+though, upon inquiry, Penrod explained that he was looking for a
+misplaced schoolbook. He thought he ought to study a little every day,
+he said, even during vacation-time. Much pleased, Mr. Schofield rose and
+joined the search, finding the missing work on mathematics with singular
+ease--which cost him precisely the price of the book the following
+September.
+
+Penrod departed to study in the backyard. There, after a cautious survey
+of the neighbourhood, he managed to dislodge the iron cover of the
+cistern, and dropped the arithmetic within. A fine splash rewarded his
+listening ear. Thus assured that when he looked for that book again no
+one would find it for him, he replaced the cover, and betook himself
+pensively to the highway, discouraging Duke from following by repeated
+volleys of stones, some imaginary and others all too real.
+
+Distant strains of brazen horns and the throbbing of drums were borne to
+him upon the kind breeze, reminding him that the world was made for joy,
+and that the Barzee and Potter Dog and Pony Show was exhibiting in a
+banlieue not far away. So, thither he bent his steps--the plentiful
+funds in his pocket burning hot holes all the way. He had paid
+twenty-two cents for the accordion, and fifteen for candy; he had bought
+the mercenary heart of Mitchy-Mitch for two: it certainly follows that
+there remained to him of his dollar, sixty-one cents--a fair fortune,
+and most unusual.
+
+Arrived upon the populous and festive scene of the Dog and Pony Show,
+he first turned his attention to the brightly decorated booths which
+surrounded the tent. The cries of the peanut vendors, of the popcorn
+men, of the toy-balloon sellers, the stirring music of the band, playing
+before the performance to attract a crowd, the shouting of excited
+children and the barking of the dogs within the tent, all sounded
+exhilaratingly in Penrod's ears and set his blood a-tingle.
+Nevertheless, he did not squander his money or fling it to the winds in
+one grand splurge. Instead, he began cautiously with the purchase of an
+extraordinarily large pickle, which he obtained from an aged negress for
+his odd cent, too obvious a bargain to be missed. At an adjacent stand
+he bought a glass of raspberry lemonade (so alleged) and sipped it as he
+ate the pickle. He left nothing of either.
+
+Next, he entered a small restaurant-tent and for a modest nickel was
+supplied with a fork and a box of sardines, previously opened, it is
+true, but more than half full. He consumed the sardines utterly, but
+left the tin box and the fork, after which he indulged in an inexpensive
+half-pint of lukewarm cider, at one of the open booths. Mug in hand,
+a gentle glow radiating toward his surface from various centres of
+activity deep inside him, he paused for breath--and the cool, sweet
+cadences of the watermelon man fell delectably upon his ear:
+
+“Ice-cole WATER-melon; ice-cole water-MELON; the biggest slice of
+ICE-cole, ripe, red, ICE-cole, rich an' rare; the biggest slice of
+ice-cole watermelon ever cut by the hand of man! BUY our ICE-cole
+water-melon?”
+
+Penrod, having drained the last drop of cider, complied with the
+watermelon man's luscious entreaty, and received a round slice of
+the fruit, magnificent in circumference and something over an inch in
+thickness. Leaving only the really dangerous part of the rind behind
+him, he wandered away from the vicinity of the watermelon man and
+supplied himself with a bag of peanuts, which, with the expenditure of a
+dime for admission, left a quarter still warm in his pocket. However, he
+managed to “break” the coin at a stand inside the tent, where a large,
+oblong paper box of popcorn was handed him, with twenty cents change.
+The box was too large to go into his pocket, but, having seated himself
+among some wistful Polack children, he placed it in his lap and devoured
+the contents at leisure during the performance. The popcorn was heavily
+larded with partially boiled molasses, and Penrod sandwiched mouthfuls
+of peanuts with gobs of this mass until the peanuts were all gone. After
+that, he ate with less avidity; a sense almost of satiety beginning
+to manifest itself to him, and it was not until the close of the
+performance that he disposed of the last morsel.
+
+He descended a little heavily to the outflowing crowd in the arena, and
+bought a caterwauling toy balloon, but showed no great enthusiasm in
+manipulating it. Near the exit, as he came out, was a hot-waffle stand
+which he had overlooked, and a sense of duty obliged him to consume the
+three waffles, thickly powdered with sugar, which the waffle man cooked
+for him upon command.
+
+They left a hottish taste in his mouth; they had not been quite up to
+his anticipation, indeed, and it was with a sense of relief that he
+turned to the “hokey-pokey” cart which stood close at hand, laden with
+square slabs of “Neapolitan ice-cream” wrapped in paper. He thought the
+ice-cream would be cooling, but somehow it fell short of the desired
+effect, and left a peculiar savour in his throat.
+
+He walked away, too languid to blow his balloon, and passed a
+fresh-taffy booth with strange indifference. A bare-armed man was
+manipulating the taffy over a hook, pulling a great white mass to the
+desired stage of “candying,” but Penrod did not pause to watch the
+operation; in fact, he averted his eyes (which were slightly glazed) in
+passing. He did not analyze his motives: simply, he was conscious that
+he preferred not to look at the mass of taffy.
+
+For some reason, he put a considerable distance between himself and the
+taffy-stand, but before long halted in the presence of a red-faced man
+who flourished a long fork over a small cooking apparatus and shouted
+jovially: “Winnies! HERE'S your hot winnies! Hot winny-WURST! Food for
+the over-worked brain, nourishing for the weak stummick, entertaining
+for the tired business man! HERE'S your hot winnies, three for a nickel,
+a half-a-dime, the twentieth-pot-of-a-dollah!”
+
+This, above all nectar and ambrosia, was the favourite dish of Penrod
+Schofield. Nothing inside him now craved it--on the contrary! But
+memory is the great hypnotist; his mind argued against his inwards that
+opportunity knocked at his door: “winny-wurst” was rigidly forbidden by
+the home authorities. Besides, there was a last nickel in his pocket;
+and nature protested against its survival. Also, the redfaced man had
+himself proclaimed his wares nourishing for the weak stummick.
+
+Penrod placed the nickel in the red hand of the red-faced man.
+
+He ate two of the three greasy, cigarlike shapes cordially pressed upon
+him in return. The first bite convinced him that he had made a mistake;
+these winnies seemed of a very inferior flavour, almost unpleasant, in
+fact. But he felt obliged to conceal his poor opinion of them, for fear
+of offending the red-faced man. He ate without haste or eagerness--so
+slowly, indeed, that he began to think the redfaced man might dislike
+him, as a deterrent of trade. Perhaps Penrod's mind was not working
+well, for he failed to remember that no law compelled him to remain
+under the eye of the red-faced man, but the virulent repulsion excited
+by his attempt to take a bite of the third sausage inspired him with at
+least an excuse for postponement.
+
+“Mighty good,” he murmured feebly, placing the sausage in the pocket
+of his jacket with a shaking hand. “Guess I'll save this one to eat at
+home, after--after dinner.”
+
+He moved sluggishly away, wishing he had not thought of dinner. A
+side-show, undiscovered until now, failed to arouse his interest, not
+even exciting a wish that he had known of its existence when he had
+money. For a time he stared without attraction; the weather-worn colours
+conveying no meaning to comprehension at a huge canvas poster depicting
+the chief his torpid eye. Then, little by little, the poster became more
+vivid to his consciousness. There was a greenish-tinted person in the
+tent, it seemed, who thrived upon a reptilian diet.
+
+Suddenly, Penrod decided that it was time to go home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX BROTHERS OF ANGELS
+
+“Indeed, doctor,” said Mrs. Schofield, with agitation and profound
+conviction, just after eight o'clock that evening, “I shall ALWAYS
+believe in mustard plasters--mustard plasters and hot--water bags. If
+it hadn't been for them I don't believed he'd have LIVED till you got
+here--I do NOT!”
+
+“Margaret,” called Mr. Schofield from the open door of a bedroom,
+“Margaret, where did you put that aromatic ammonia? Where's Margaret?”
+
+But he had to find the aromatic spirits of ammonia himself, for Margaret
+was not in the house. She stood in the shadow beneath a maple tree
+near the street corner, a guitar-case in her hand; and she scanned with
+anxiety a briskly approaching figure. The arc light, swinging above,
+revealed this figure as that of him she awaited. He was passing toward
+the gate without seeing her, when she arrested him with a fateful
+whisper.
+
+“BOB!”
+
+Mr. Robert Williams swung about hastily. “Why, Margaret!”
+
+“Here, take your guitar,” she whispered hurriedly. “I was afraid if
+father happened to find it he'd break it all to pieces!”
+
+“What for?” asked the startled Robert.
+
+“Because I'm sure he knows it's yours.” “But what----”
+
+“Oh, Bob,” she moaned, “I was waiting here to tell you. I was so afraid
+you'd try to come in----”
+
+“TRY!” exclaimed the unfortunate young man, quite dumfounded. “TRY to
+come----”
+
+“Yes, before I warned you. I've been waiting here to tell you, Bob, you
+mustn't come near the house if I were you I'd stay away from even this
+neighbourhood--far away! For a while I don't think it would be actually
+SAFE for----”
+
+“Margaret, will you please----”
+
+“It's all on account of that dollar you gave Penrod this morning,” she
+walled. “First, he bought that horrible concertina that made papa so
+furious--”
+
+“But Penrod didn't tell that I----”
+
+“Oh, wait!” she cried lamentably. “Listen! He didn't tell at lunch, but
+he got home about dinner-time in the most--well! I've seen pale people
+before, but nothing like Penrod. Nobody could IMAGINE it--not unless
+they'd seen him! And he looked, so STRANGE, and kept making such
+unnatural faces, and at first all he would say was that he'd eaten a
+little piece of apple and thought it must have some microbes on it. But
+he got sicker and sicker, and we put him to bed--and then we all thought
+he was going to die--and, of COURSE, no little piece of apple would
+have--well, and he kept getting worse and then he said he'd had a
+dollar. He said he'd spent it for the concertina, and watermelon, and
+chocolate-creams, and licorice sticks, and lemon-drops, and peanuts,
+and jaw-breakers, and sardines, and raspberry lemonade, and pickles, and
+popcorn, and ice-cream, and cider, and sausage--there was sausage in
+his pocket, and mamma says his jacket is ruined--and cinnamon drops--and
+waffles--and he ate four or five lobster croquettes at lunch--and papa
+said, 'Who gave you that dollar?' Only he didn't say 'WHO'--he said
+something horrible, Bob! And Penrod thought he was going to die, and he
+said you gave it to him, and oh! it was just pitiful to hear the poor
+child, Bob, because he thought he was dying, you see, and he blamed you
+for the whole thing. He said if you'd only let him alone and not given
+it to him, he'd have grown up to be a good man--and now he couldn't! I
+never heard anything so heart-rending--he was so weak he could hardly
+whisper, but he kept trying to talk, telling us over and over it was all
+your fault.”
+
+In the darkness Mr. Williams' facial expression could not be seen, but
+his voice sounded hopeful.
+
+“Is he--is he still in a great deal of pain?”
+
+“They say the crisis is past,” said Margaret, “but the doctor's still
+up there. He said it was the acutest case of indigestion he had ever
+treated in the whole course of his professional practice.”
+
+“Of course _I_ didn't know what he'd do with the dollar,” said Robert.
+
+She did not reply.
+
+He began plaintively, “Margaret, you don't----”
+
+“I've never seen papa and mamma so upset about anything,” she said,
+rather primly.
+
+“You mean they're upset about ME?”
+
+“We ARE all very much upset,” returned Margaret, more starch in her tone
+as she remembered not only Penrod's sufferings but a duty she had vowed
+herself to perform.
+
+“Margaret! YOU don't----”
+
+“Robert,” she said firmly and, also, with a rhetorical complexity which
+breeds a suspicion of pre-rehearsal--“Robert, for the present I can only
+look at it in one way: when you gave that money to Penrod you put into
+the hands of an unthinking little child a weapon which might be, and,
+indeed was, the means of his undoing. Boys are not respon----”
+
+“But you saw me give him the dollar, and you didn't----”
+
+“Robert!” she checked him with increasing severity. “I am only a woman
+and not accustomed to thinking everything out on the spur of the moment;
+but I cannot change my mind. Not now, at least.”
+
+“And you think I'd better not come in to-night?”
+
+“To-night!” she gasped. “Not for WEEKS! Papa would----”
+
+“But Margaret,” he urged plaintively, “how can you blame me for----”
+
+“I have not used the word 'blame,'” she interrupted. “But I must insist
+that for your carelessness to--to wreak such havoc--cannot fail to--to
+lessen my confidence in your powers of judgment. I cannot change my
+convictions in this matter--not to-night--and I cannot remain here
+another instant. The poor child may need me. Robert, good-night.”
+
+With chill dignity she withdrew, entered the house, and returned to the
+sick-room, leaving the young man in outer darkness to brood upon his
+crime--and upon Penrod.
+
+
+That sincere invalid became convalescent upon the third day; and a
+week elapsed, then, before he found an opportunity to leave the house
+unaccompanied--save by Duke. But at last he set forth and approached the
+Jones neighbourhood in high spirits, pleasantly conscious of his pallor,
+hollow cheeks, and other perquisites of illness provocative of interest.
+
+One thought troubled him a little because it gave him a sense of
+inferiority to a rival. He believed, against his will, that Maurice
+Levy could have successfully eaten chocolate-creams, licorice sticks,
+lemon-drops, jaw-breakers, peanuts, waffles, lobster croquettes,
+sardines, cinnamon-drops, watermelon, pickles, popcorn, ice-cream
+and sausage with raspberry lemonade and cider. Penrod had admitted to
+himself that Maurice could do it and afterward attend to business, or
+pleasure, without the slightest discomfort; and this was probably no
+more than a fair estimate of one of the great constitutions of all time.
+As a digester, Maurice Levy would have disappointed a Borgia.
+
+Fortunately, Maurice was still at Atlantic City--and now the
+convalescent's heart leaped. In the distance he saw Marjorie coming--in
+pink again, with a ravishing little parasol over her head. And alone! No
+Mitchy-Mitch was to mar this meeting.
+
+Penrod increased the feebleness of his steps, now and then leaning upon
+the fence as if for support.
+
+“How do you do, Marjorie?” he said, in his best sick-room voice, as she
+came near.
+
+To his pained amazement, she proceeded on her way, her nose at a
+celebrated elevation--an icy nose.
+
+She cut him dead.
+
+He threw his invalid's airs to the winds, and hastened after her.
+
+“Marjorie,” he pleaded, “what's the matter? Are you mad? Honest, that
+day you said to come back next morning, and you'd be on the corner,
+I was sick. Honest, I was AWFUL sick, Marjorie! I had to have the
+doctor----”
+
+“DOCTOR!” She whirled upon him, her lovely eyes blazing.
+
+“I guess WE'VE had to have the doctor enough at OUR house, thanks to
+you, Mister Penrod Schofield. Papa says you haven't got NEAR sense
+enough to come in out of the rain, after what you did to poor little
+Mitchy-Mitch----”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Yes, and he's sick in bed YET!” Marjorie went on, with unabated fury.
+“And papa says if he ever catches you in this part of town----”
+
+“WHAT'D I do to Mitchy-Mitch?” gasped Penrod.
+
+“You know well enough what you did to Mitchy-Mitch!” she cried. “You
+gave him that great, big, nasty two-cent piece!”
+
+“Well, what of it?”
+
+“Mitchy-Mitch swallowed it!”
+
+“What!”
+
+“And papa says if he ever just lays eyes on you, once, in this
+neighbourhood----”
+
+But Penrod had started for home.
+
+In his embittered heart there was increasing a critical disapproval of
+the Creator's methods. When He made pretty girls, thought Penrod, why
+couldn't He have left out their little brothers!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI RUPE COLLINS
+
+For several days after this, Penrod thought of growing up to be a
+monk, and engaged in good works so far as to carry some kittens (that
+otherwise would have been drowned) and a pair of Margaret's outworn
+dancing-slippers to a poor, ungrateful old man sojourning in a shed
+up the alley. And although Mr. Robert Williams, after a very short
+interval, began to leave his guitar on the front porch again, exactly as
+if he thought nothing had happened, Penrod, with his younger vision of
+a father's mood, remained coldly distant from the Jones neighbourhood.
+With his own family his manner was gentle, proud and sad, but not for
+long enough to frighten them. The change came with mystifying abruptness
+at the end of the week.
+
+It was Duke who brought it about.
+
+Duke could chase a much bigger dog out of the Schofields' yard and far
+down the street. This might be thought to indicate unusual valour on
+the part of Duke and cowardice on that of the bigger dogs whom he
+undoubtedly put to rout. On the contrary, all such flights were founded
+in mere superstition, for dogs are even more superstitious than boys
+and coloured people; and the most firmly established of all dog
+superstitions is that any dog--be he the smallest and feeblest in the
+world--can whip any trespasser whatsoever.
+
+A rat-terrier believes that on his home grounds he can whip an elephant.
+It follows, of course, that a big dog, away from his own home, will run
+from a little dog in the little dog's neighbourhood. Otherwise, the big
+dog must face a charge of inconsistency, and dogs are as consistent as
+they are superstitious. A dog believes in war, but he is convinced
+that there are times when it is moral to run; and the thoughtful
+physiognomist, seeing a big dog fleeing out of a little dog's yard, must
+observe that the expression of the big dog's face is more conscientious
+than alarmed: it is the expression of a person performing a duty to
+himself.
+
+Penrod understood these matters perfectly; he knew that the gaunt brown
+hound Duke chased up the alley had fled only out of deference to a
+custom, yet Penrod could not refrain from bragging of Duke to the
+hound's owner, a fat-faced stranger of twelve or thirteen, who had
+wandered into the neighbourhood.
+
+“You better keep that ole yellow dog o' yours back,” said Penrod
+ominously, as he climbed the fence. “You better catch him and hold him
+till I get mine inside the yard again. Duke's chewed up some pretty bad
+bulldogs around here.”
+
+The fat-faced boy gave Penrod a fishy stare. “You'd oughta learn him not
+to do that,” he said. “It'll make him sick.”
+
+“What will?”
+
+The stranger laughed raspingly and gazed up the alley, where the hound,
+having come to a halt, now coolly sat down, and, with an expression of
+roguish benevolence, patronizingly watched the tempered fury of Duke,
+whose assaults and barkings were becoming perfunctory.
+
+“What'll make Duke sick?” Penrod demanded.
+
+“Eatin' dead bulldogs people leave around here.”
+
+This was not improvisation but formula, adapted from other occasions to
+the present encounter; nevertheless, it was new to Penrod, and he was
+so taken with it that resentment lost itself in admiration. Hastily
+committing the gem to memory for use upon a dog-owning friend, he
+inquired in a sociable tone:
+
+“What's your dog's name?”
+
+“Dan. You better call your ole pup, 'cause Dan eats LIVE dogs.”
+
+Dan's actions poorly supported his master's assertion, for, upon Duke's
+ceasing to bark, Dan rose and showed the most courteous interest in
+making the little, old dog's acquaintance. Dan had a great deal of
+manner, and it became plain that Duke was impressed favourably in spite
+of former prejudice, so that presently the two trotted amicably back to
+their masters and sat down with the harmonious but indifferent air of
+having known each other intimately for years.
+
+They were received without comment, though both boys looked at them
+reflectively for a time. It was Penrod who spoke first.
+
+“What number you go to?” (In an “oral lesson in English,” Penrod had
+been instructed to put this question in another form: “May I ask which
+of our public schools you attend?”)
+
+“Me? What number do I go to?” said the stranger, contemptuously. “I
+don't go to NO number in vacation!”
+
+“I mean when it ain't.”
+
+“Third,” returned the fat-faced boy. “I got 'em ALL scared in THAT
+school.”
+
+“What of?” innocently asked Penrod, to whom “the Third”--in a distant
+part of town--was undiscovered country.
+
+“What of? I guess you'd soon see what of, if you ever was in that school
+about one day. You'd be lucky if you got out alive!”
+
+“Are the teachers mean?”
+
+The other boy frowned with bitter scorn. “Teachers! Teachers don't order
+ME around, I can tell you! They're mighty careful how they try to run
+over Rupe Collins.”
+
+“Who's Rupe Collins?”
+
+“Who is he?” echoed the fat-faced boy incredulously. “Say, ain't you got
+ANY sense?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Say, wouldn't you be just as happy if you had SOME sense?”
+
+“Ye-es.” Penrod's answer, like the look he lifted to the impressive
+stranger, was meek and placative. “Rupe Collins is the principal at your
+school, guess.”
+
+The other yelled with jeering laughter, and mocked Penrod's manner and
+voice. “'Rupe Collins is the principal at your school, I guess!'” He
+laughed harshly again, then suddenly showed truculence. “Say, 'bo,
+whyn't you learn enough to go in the house when it rains? What's the
+matter of you, anyhow?”
+
+“Well,” urged Penrod timidly, “nobody ever TOLD me who Rupe Collins is:
+I got a RIGHT to think he's the principal, haven't I?”
+
+The fat-faced boy shook his head disgustedly. “Honest, you make me
+sick!”
+
+Penrod's expression became one of despair. “Well, who IS he?” he cried.
+
+“'Who IS he?'” mocked the other, with a scorn that withered. “'Who IS
+he?' ME!”
+
+“Oh!” Penrod was humiliated but relieved: he felt that he had proved
+himself criminally ignorant, yet a peril seemed to have passed. “Rupe
+Collins is your name, then, I guess. I kind of thought it was, all the
+time.”
+
+The fat-faced boy still appeared embittered, burlesquing this speech in
+a hateful falsetto. “'Rupe Collins is YOUR name, then, I guess!' Oh, you
+'kind of thought it was, all the time,' did you?” Suddenly concentrating
+his brow into a histrionic scowl he thrust his face within an inch of
+Penrod's. “Yes, sonny, Rupe Collins is my name, and you better look
+out what you say when he's around or you'll get in big trouble! YOU
+UNDERSTAND THAT, 'BO?”
+
+Penrod was cowed but fascinated: he felt that there was something
+dangerous and dashing about this newcomer.
+
+“Yes,” he said, feebly, drawing back. “My name's Penrod Schofield.”
+
+“Then I reckon your father and mother ain't got good sense,” said Mr.
+Collins promptly, this also being formula.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“'Cause if they had they'd of give you a good name!” And the agreeable
+youth instantly rewarded himself for the wit with another yell of
+rasping laughter, after which he pointed suddenly at Penrod's right
+hand.
+
+“Where'd you get that wart on your finger?” he demanded severely.
+
+“Which finger?” asked the mystified Penrod, extending his hand.
+
+“The middle one.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“There!” exclaimed Rupe Collins, seizing and vigorously twisting the
+wartless finger naively offered for his inspection.
+
+“Quit!” shouted Penrod in agony. “QUEE-yut!”
+
+“Say your prayers!” commanded Rupe, and continued to twist the luckless
+finger until Penrod writhed to his knees.
+
+“OW!” The victim, released, looked grievously upon the still painful
+finger.
+
+At this Rupe's scornful expression altered to one of contrition. “Well,
+I declare!” he exclaimed remorsefully. “I didn't s'pose it would hurt.
+Turn about's fair play; so now you do that to me.”
+
+He extended the middle finger of his left hand and Penrod promptly
+seized it, but did not twist it, for he was instantly swung round with
+his back to his amiable new acquaintance: Rupe's right hand operated
+upon the back of Penrod's slender neck; Rupe's knee tortured the small
+of Penrod's back.
+
+“OW!” Penrod bent far forward involuntarily and went to his knees again.
+
+“Lick dirt,” commanded Rupe, forcing the captive's face to the sidewalk;
+and the suffering Penrod completed this ceremony.
+
+Mr. Collins evinced satisfaction by means of his horse laugh.
+
+“You'd last jest about one day up at the Third!” he said. “You'd come
+runnin' home, yellin' 'MOM-MUH, MOM-muh,' before recess was over!”
+
+“No, I wouldn't,” Penrod protested rather weakly, dusting his knees.
+
+“You would, too!”
+
+“No, I w----
+
+“Looky here,” said the fat-faced boy, darkly, “what you mean,
+counterdicking me?”
+
+He advanced a step and Penrod hastily qualified his contradiction.
+
+“I mean, I don't THINK I would. I----”
+
+“You better look out!” Rupe moved closer, and unexpectedly grasped the
+back of Penrod's neck again. “Say, 'I WOULD run home yellin' “MOM-muh!”'”
+
+“Ow! I WOULD run home yellin' 'Mom-muh.'”
+
+“There!” said Rupe, giving the helpless nape a final squeeze. “That's
+the way we do up at the Third.”
+
+Penrod rubbed his neck and asked meekly:
+
+“Can you do that to any boy up at the Third?”
+
+“See here now,” said Rupe, in the tone of one goaded beyond all
+endurance, “YOU say if I can! You better say it quick, or----”
+
+“I knew you could,” Penrod interposed hastily, with the pathetic
+semblance of a laugh. “I only said that in fun.”
+
+“In 'fun'!” repeated Rupe stormily. “You better look out how you----”
+
+“Well, I SAID I wasn't in earnest!” Penrod retreated a few steps. “_I_
+knew you could, all the time. I expect _I_ could do it to some of the
+boys up at the Third, myself. Couldn't I?”
+
+“No, you couldn't.”
+
+“Well, there must be SOME boy up there that I could----”
+
+“No, they ain't! You better----”
+
+“I expect not, then,” said Penrod, quickly.
+
+“You BETTER 'expect not.' Didn't I tell you once you'd never get back
+alive if you ever tried to come up around the Third? You want me to SHOW
+you how we do up there, 'bo?”
+
+He began a slow and deadly advance, whereupon Penrod timidly offered a
+diversion:
+
+“Say, Rupe, I got a box of rats in our stable under a glass cover, so
+you can watch 'em jump around when you hammer on the box. Come on and
+look at 'em.”
+
+“All right,” said the fat-faced boy, slightly mollified. “We'll let Dan
+kill 'em.”
+
+“No, SIR! I'm goin' to keep 'em. They're kind of pets; I've had 'em all
+summer--I got names for em, and----”
+
+“Looky here, 'bo. Did you hear me say we'll let 'Dan kill 'em?”
+
+“Yes, but I won't----”
+
+“WHAT won't you?” Rupe became sinister immediately. “It seems to me
+you're gettin' pretty fresh around here.”
+
+“Well, I don't want----”
+
+Mr. Collins once more brought into play the dreadful eye-to-eye scowl as
+practised “up at the Third,” and, sometimes, also by young leading
+men upon the stage. Frowning appallingly, and thrusting forward his
+underlip, he placed his nose almost in contact with the nose of Penrod,
+whose eyes naturally became crossed.
+
+“Dan kills the rats. See?” hissed the fat-faced boy, maintaining the
+horrible juxtaposition.
+
+“Well, all right,” said Penrod, swallowing. “I don't want 'em much.”
+ And when the pose had been relaxed, he stared at his new friend for a
+moment, almost with reverence. Then he brightened.
+
+“Come on, Rupe!” he cried enthusiastically, as he climbed the fence.
+“We'll give our dogs a little live meat--'bo!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII THE IMITATOR
+
+At the dinner-table, that evening, Penrod Surprised his family by
+remarking, in a voice they had never heard him attempt--a law-giving
+voice of intentional gruffness:
+
+“Any man that's makin' a hunderd dollars a month is makin' good money.”
+
+“What?” asked Mr. Schofield, staring, for the previous conversation had
+concerned the illness of an infant relative in Council Bluffs.
+
+“Any man that's makin' a hunderd dollars a month is makin' good money.”
+
+“What IS he talking about!” Margaret appealed to the invisible.
+
+“Well,” said Penrod, frowning, “that's what foremen at the ladder works
+get.”
+
+“How in the world do you know?” asked his mother.
+
+“Well, I KNOW it! A hunderd dollars a month is good money, I tell you!”
+
+“Well, what of it?” said the father, impatiently.
+
+“Nothin'. I only said it was good money.”
+
+Mr. Schofield shook his head, dismissing the subject; and here he made
+a mistake: he should have followed up his son's singular contribution
+to the conversation. That would have revealed the fact that there was a
+certain Rupe Collins whose father was a foreman at the ladder works. All
+clues are important when a boy makes his first remark in a new key.
+
+“'Good money'?” repeated Margaret, curiously. “What is 'good' money?”
+
+Penrod turned upon her a stern glance. “Say, wouldn't you be just as
+happy if you had SOME sense?”
+
+“Penrod!” shouted his father. But Penrod's mother gazed with dismay at
+her son: he had never before spoken like that to his sister.
+
+Mrs. Schofield might have been more dismayed than she was, if she had
+realized that it was the beginning of an epoch. After dinner, Penrod was
+slightly scalded in the back as the result of telling Della, the cook,
+that there was a wart on the middle finger of her right hand. Della thus
+proving poor material for his new manner to work upon, he approached
+Duke, in the backyard, and, bending double, seized the lowly animal by
+the forepaws.
+
+“I let you know my name's Penrod Schofield,” hissed the boy. He
+protruded his underlip ferociously, scowled, and thrust forward his head
+until his nose touched the dog's. “And you better look out when Penrod
+Schofield's around, or you'll get in big trouble! YOU UNDERSTAN' THAT,
+'BO?”
+
+The next day, and the next, the increasing change in Penrod puzzled and
+distressed his family, who had no idea of its source.
+
+How might they guess that hero-worship takes such forms? They were
+vaguely conscious that a rather shabby boy, not of the neighbourhood,
+came to “play” with Penrod several times; but they failed to connect
+this circumstance with the peculiar behaviour of the son of the house,
+whose ideals (his father remarked) seemed to have suddenly become
+identical with those of Gyp the Blood.
+
+Meanwhile, for Penrod himself, “life had taken on new meaning, new
+richness.” He had become a fighting man--in conversation at least. “Do
+you want to know how I do when they try to slip up on me from behind?”
+ he asked Della. And he enacted for her unappreciative eye a scene of
+fistic manoeuvres wherein he held an imaginary antagonist helpless in a
+net of stratagems.
+
+Frequently, when he was alone, he would outwit, and pummel this same
+enemy, and, after a cunning feint, land a dolorous stroke full upon a
+face of air. “There! I guess you'll know better next time. That's the
+way we do up at the Third!”
+
+Sometimes, in solitary pantomime, he encountered more than one opponent
+at a time, for numbers were apt to come upon him treacherously,
+especially at a little after his rising hour, when he might be caught at
+a disadvantage--perhaps standing on one leg to encase the other in his
+knickerbockers. Like lightning, he would hurl the trapping garment from
+him, and, ducking and pivoting, deal great sweeping blows among the
+circle of sneaking devils. (That was how he broke the clock in his
+bedroom.) And while these battles were occupying his attention, it was
+a waste of voice to call him to breakfast, though if his mother, losing
+patience, came to his room, she would find him seated on the bed pulling
+at a stocking. “Well, ain't I coming fast as I CAN?”
+
+At the table and about the house generally he was bumptious, loud with
+fatuous misinformation, and assumed a domineering tone, which neither
+satire nor reproof seemed able to reduce: but it was among his own
+intimates that his new superiority was most outrageous. He twisted the
+fingers and squeezed the necks of all the boys of the neighbourhood,
+meeting their indignation with a hoarse and rasping laugh he had
+acquired after short practice in the stable, where he jeered and taunted
+the lawn-mower, the garden-scythe and the wheelbarrow quite out of
+countenance.
+
+Likewise he bragged to the other boys by the hour, Rupe Collins being
+the chief subject of encomium--next to Penrod himself. “That's the
+way we do up at the Third,” became staple explanation of violence, for
+Penrod, like Tartarin, was plastic in the hands of his own imagination,
+and at times convinced himself that he really was one of those dark
+and murderous spirits exclusively of whom “the Third” was
+composed--according to Rupe Collins.
+
+Then, when Penrod had exhausted himself repeating to nausea accounts of
+the prowess of himself and his great friend, he would turn to two other
+subjects for vainglory. These were his father and Duke.
+
+Mothers must accept the fact that between babyhood and manhood their
+sons do not boast of them. The boy, with boys, is a Choctaw; and either
+the influence or the protection of women is shameful. “Your mother won't
+let you,” is an insult. But, “My father won't let me,” is a dignified
+explanation and cannot be hooted. A boy is ruined among his fellows if
+he talks much of his mother or sisters; and he must recognize it as
+his duty to offer at least the appearance of persecution to all things
+ranked as female, such as cats and every species of fowl. But he must
+champion his father and his dog, and, ever, ready to pit either against
+any challenger, must picture both as ravening for battle and absolutely
+unconquerable.
+
+Penrod, of course, had always talked by the code, but, under the new
+stimulus, Duke was represented virtually as a cross between Bob, Son of
+Battle, and a South American vampire; and this in spite of the fact that
+Duke himself often sat close by, a living lie, with the hope of peace
+in his heart. As for Penrod's father, that gladiator was painted as of
+sentiments and dimensions suitable to a super-demon composed of equal
+parts of Goliath, Jack Johnson and the Emperor Nero.
+
+Even Penrod's walk was affected; he adopted a gait which was a kind of
+taunting swagger; and, when he passed other children on the street, he
+practised the habit of feinting a blow; then, as the victim dodged,
+he rasped the triumphant horse laugh which he gradually mastered to
+horrible perfection. He did this to Marjorie Jones--ay! this was
+their next meeting, and such is Eros, young! What was even worse, in
+Marjorie's opinion, he went on his way without explanation, and left
+her standing on the corner talking about it, long after he was out of
+hearing.
+
+Within five days from his first encounter with Rupe Collins, Penrod had
+become unbearable. He even almost alienated Sam Williams, who for a time
+submitted to finger twisting and neck squeezing and the new style of
+conversation, but finally declared that Penrod made him “sick.” He made
+the statement with fervour, one sultry afternoon, in Mr. Schofield's
+stable, in the presence of Herman and Verman.
+
+“You better look out, 'bo,” said Penrod, threateningly. “I'll show you a
+little how we do up at the Third.”
+
+“Up at the Third!” Sam repeated with scorn. “You haven't ever been up
+there.”
+
+“I haven't?” cried Penrod. “I HAVEN'T?”
+
+“No, you haven't!”
+
+“Looky here!” Penrod, darkly argumentative, prepared to perform the
+eye-to-eye business. “When haven't I been up there?”
+
+“You haven't NEVER been up there!” In spite of Penrod's closely
+approaching nose Sam maintained his ground, and appealed for
+confirmation. “Has he, Herman?”
+
+“I don' reckon so,” said Herman, laughing.
+
+“WHAT!” Penrod transferred his nose to the immediate vicinity of
+Herman's nose. “You don't reckon so, 'bo, don't you? You better look out
+how you reckon around here! YOU UNDERSTAN' THAT, 'BO?”
+
+Herman bore the eye-to-eye very well; indeed, it seemed to please
+him, for he continued to laugh while Verman chuckled delightedly. The
+brothers had been in the country picking berries for a week, and it
+happened that this was their first experience of the new manifestation
+of Penrod.
+
+“HAVEN'T I been up at the Third?” the sinister Penrod demanded.
+
+“I don' reckon so. How come you ast ME?”
+
+“Didn't you just hear me SAY I been up there?”
+
+“Well,” said Herman mischievously, “hearin' ain't believin'!”
+
+Penrod clutched him by the back of the neck, but Herman, laughing
+loudly, ducked and released himself at once, retreating to the wall.
+
+“You take that back!” Penrod shouted, striking out wildly.
+
+“Don' git mad,” begged the small darky, while a number of blows falling
+upon his warding arms failed to abate his amusement, and a sound one
+upon the cheek only made him laugh the more unrestrainedly. He behaved
+exactly as if Penrod were tickling him, and his brother, Verman, rolled
+with joy in a wheelbarrow. Penrod pummelled till he was tired, and
+produced no greater effect.
+
+“There!” he panted, desisting finally. “NOW I reckon you know whether I
+been up there or not!”
+
+Herman rubbed his smitten cheek. “Pow!” he exclaimed. “Pow-ee! You
+cert'ny did lan' me good one NAT time! Oo-ee! she HURT!”
+
+“You'll get hurt worse'n that,” Penrod assured him, “if you stay around
+here much. Rupe Collins is comin' this afternoon, he said. We're goin'
+to make some policemen's billies out of the rake handle.”
+
+“You go' spoil new rake you' pa bought?”
+
+“What do WE care? I and Rupe got to have billies, haven't we?”
+
+“How you make 'em?”
+
+“Melt lead and pour in a hole we're goin' to make in the end of 'em.
+Then we're goin' to carry 'em in our pockets, and if anybody says
+anything to us--OH, oh! look out! They won't get a crack on the
+head--OH, no!”
+
+“When's Rupe Collins coming?” Sam Williams inquired rather uneasily.
+He had heard a great deal too much of this personage, but as yet the
+pleasure of actual acquaintance had been denied him.
+
+“He's liable to be here any time,” answered Penrod. “You better look
+out. You'll be lucky if you get home alive, if you stay till HE comes.”
+
+“I ain't afraid of him,” Sam returned, conventionally.
+
+“You are, too!” (There was some truth in the retort.) “There ain't any
+boy in this part of town but me that wouldn't be afraid of him. You'd be
+afraid to talk to him. You wouldn't get a word out of your mouth before
+old Rupie'd have you where you'd wished you never come around HIM,
+lettin' on like you was so much! YOU wouldn't run home yellin' 'Mom-muh'
+or nothin'! OH, no!”
+
+“Who Rupe Collins?” asked Herman.
+
+“'Who Rupe Collins?'” Penrod mocked, and used his rasping laugh, but,
+instead of showing fright, Herman appeared to think he was meant to
+laugh, too; and so he did, echoed by Verman. “You just hang around here
+a little while longer,” Penrod added, grimly, “and you'll find out who
+Rupe Collins is, and I pity YOU when you do!”
+
+“What he go' do?”
+
+“You'll see; that's all! You just wait and----”
+
+At this moment a brown hound ran into the stable through the alley door,
+wagged a greeting to Penrod, and fraternized with Duke. The fat-faced
+boy appeared upon the threshold and gazed coldly about the little
+company in the carriage-house, whereupon the coloured brethren, ceasing
+from merriment, were instantly impassive, and Sam Williams moved a
+little nearer the door leading into the yard.
+
+Obviously, Sam regarded the newcomer as a redoubtable if not ominous
+figure. He was a head taller than either Sam or Penrod; head and
+shoulders taller than Herman, who was short for his age; and Verman
+could hardly be used for purposes of comparison at all, being a mere
+squat brown spot, not yet quite nine years on this planet. And to
+Sam's mind, the aspect of Mr. Collins realized Penrod's portentous
+foreshadowings. Upon the fat face there was an expression of truculent
+intolerance which had been cultivated by careful habit to such
+perfection that Sam's heart sank at sight of it. A somewhat enfeebled
+twin to this expression had of late often decorated the visage of
+Penrod, and appeared upon that ingenuous surface now, as he advanced to
+welcome the eminent visitor.
+
+The host swaggered toward the door with a great deal of shoulder
+movement, carelessly feinting a slap at Verman in passing, and creating
+by various means the atmosphere of a man who has contemptuously amused
+himself with underlings while awaiting an equal.
+
+“Hello, 'bo!” Penrod said in the deepest voice possible to him.
+
+“Who you callin' 'bo?” was the ungracious response, accompanied by
+immediate action of a similar nature. Rupe held Penrod's head in the
+crook of an elbow and massaged his temples with a hard-pressing knuckle.
+
+“I was only in fun, Rupie,” pleaded the sufferer, and then, being set
+free, “Come here, Sam,” he said.
+
+“What for?”
+
+Penrod laughed pityingly. “Pshaw, I ain't goin' to hurt you. Come on.”
+ Sam, maintaining his position near the other door, Penrod went to him
+and caught him round the neck.
+
+“Watch me, Rupie!” Penrod called, and performed upon Sam the knuckle
+operation which he had himself just undergone, Sam submitting
+mechanically, his eyes fixed with increasing uneasiness upon Rupe
+Collins. Sam had a premonition that something even more painful than
+Penrod's knuckle was going to be inflicted upon him.
+
+“THAT don' hurt,” said Penrod, pushing him away.
+
+“Yes, it does, too!” Sam rubbed his temple.
+
+“Puh! It didn't hurt me, did it, Rupie? Come on in, Rupe: show this baby
+where he's got a wart on his finger.”
+
+“You showed me that trick,” Sam objected. “You already did that to
+me. You tried it twice this afternoon and I don't know how many times
+before, only you weren't strong enough after the first time. Anyway, I
+know what it is, and I don't----”
+
+“Come on, Rupe,” said Penrod. “Make the baby lick dirt.”
+
+At this bidding, Rupe approached, while Sam, still protesting, moved to
+the threshold of the outer door; but Penrod seized him by the shoulders
+and swung him indoors with a shout.
+
+“Little baby wants to run home to its Mom-muh! Here he is, Rupie.”
+
+Thereupon was Penrod's treachery to an old comrade properly rewarded,
+for as the two struggled, Rupe caught each by the back of the neck,
+simultaneously, and, with creditable impartiality, forced both boys to
+their knees.
+
+“Lick dirt!” he commanded, forcing them still forward, until their faces
+were close to the stable floor.
+
+At this moment he received a real surprise. With a loud whack something
+struck the back of his head, and, turning, he beheld Verman in the act
+of lifting a piece of lath to strike again.
+
+“Em moys ome!” said Verman, the Giant Killer.
+
+“He tongue-tie',” Herman explained. “He say, let 'em boys alone.”
+
+Rupe addressed his host briefly:
+
+“Chase them nigs out o' here!”
+
+“Don' call me nig,” said Herman. “I mine my own biznuss. You let 'em
+boys alone.”
+
+Rupe strode across the still prostrate Sam, stepped upon Penrod, and,
+equipping his countenance with the terrifying scowl and protruded jaw,
+lowered his head to the level of Herman's.
+
+“Nig, you'll be lucky if you leave here alive!” And he leaned forward
+till his nose was within less than an inch of Herman's nose.
+
+It could be felt that something awful was about to happen, and Penrod,
+as he rose from the floor, suffered an unexpected twinge of apprehension
+and remorse: he hoped that Rupe wouldn't REALLY hurt Herman. A sudden
+dislike of Rupe and Rupe's ways rose within him, as he looked at the big
+boy overwhelming the little darky with that ferocious scowl. Penrod,
+all at once, felt sorry about something indefinable; and, with equal
+vagueness, he felt foolish. “Come on, Rupe,” he suggested, feebly, “let
+Herman go, and let's us make our billies out of the rake handle.”
+
+The rake handle, however, was not available, if Rupe had inclined to
+favour the suggestion. Verman had discarded his lath for the rake, which
+he was at this moment lifting in the air.
+
+“You ole black nigger,” the fat-faced boy said venomously to Herman,
+“I'm agoin' to----”
+
+But he had allowed his nose to remain too long near Herman's.
+
+Penrod's familiar nose had been as close with only a ticklish spinal
+effect upon the not very remote descendant of Congo man-eaters. The
+result produced by the glare of Rupe's unfamiliar eyes, and by
+the dreadfully suggestive proximity of Rupe's unfamiliar nose, was
+altogether different. Herman's and Verman's Bangala great-grandfathers
+never considered people of their own jungle neighbourhood proper
+material for a meal, but they looked upon strangers especially truculent
+strangers--as distinctly edible.
+
+Penrod and Sam heard Rupe suddenly squawk and bellow; saw him writhe and
+twist and fling out his arms like flails, though without removing his
+face from its juxtaposition; indeed, for a moment, the two heads seemed
+even closer.
+
+Then they separated--and battle was on!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII COLOURED TROOPS IN ACTION
+
+How neat and pure is the task of the chronicler who has the tale to tell
+of a “good rousing fight” between boys or men who fight in the “good old
+English way,” according to a model set for fights in books long before
+Tom Brown went to Rugby. There are seconds and rounds and rules of
+fair-play, and always there is great good feeling in the end--though
+sometimes, to vary the model, “the Butcher” defeats the hero--and the
+chronicler who stencils this fine old pattern on his page is certain of
+applause as the stirrer of “red blood.” There is no surer recipe.
+
+But when Herman and Verman set to 't the record must be no more than a
+few fragments left by the expurgator. It has been perhaps sufficiently
+suggested that the altercation in Mr. Schofield's stable opened with
+mayhem in respect to the aggressor's nose. Expressing vocally his
+indignation and the extremity of his pained surprise, Mr. Collins
+stepped backward, holding his left hand over his nose, and striking at
+Herman with his right. Then Verman hit him with the rake.
+
+Verman struck from behind. He struck as hard as he could. And he struck
+with the tines down--For, in his simple, direct African way he wished to
+kill his enemy, and he wished to kill him as soon as possible. That was
+his single, earnest purpose.
+
+On this account, Rupe Collins was peculiarly unfortunate. He was plucky
+and he enjoyed conflict, but neither his ambitions nor his anticipations
+had ever included murder. He had not learned that an habitually
+aggressive person runs the danger of colliding with beings in one of
+those lower stages of evolution wherein theories about “hitting below
+the belt” have not yet made their appearance.
+
+The rake glanced from the back of Rupe's head to his shoulder, but it
+felled him. Both darkies jumped full upon him instantly, and the three
+rolled and twisted upon the stable-floor, unloosing upon the air sincere
+maledictions closely connected with complaints of cruel and unusual
+treatment; while certain expressions of feeling presently emanating from
+Herman and Verman indicated that Rupe Collins, in this extremity, was
+proving himself not too slavishly addicted to fighting by rule. Dan and
+Duke, mistaking all for mirth, barked gayly.
+
+From the panting, pounding, yelling heap issued words and phrases
+hitherto quite unknown to Penrod and Sam; also, a hoarse repetition
+in the voice of Rupe concerning his ear left it not to be doubted
+that additional mayhem was taking place. Appalled, the two spectators
+retreated to the doorway nearest the yard, where they stood dumbly
+watching the cataclysm.
+
+The struggle increased in primitive simplicity: time and again the
+howling Rupe got to his knees only to go down again as the earnest
+brothers, in their own way, assisted him to a more reclining position.
+Primal forces operated here, and the two blanched, slightly higher
+products of evolution, Sam and Penrod, no more thought of interfering
+than they would have thought of interfering with an earthquake.
+
+At last, out of the ruck rose Verman, disfigured and maniacal. With a
+wild eye he looked about him for his trusty rake; but Penrod, in horror,
+had long since thrown the rake out into the yard. Naturally, it had not
+seemed necessary to remove the lawn-mower.
+
+The frantic eye of Verman fell upon the lawn-mower, and instantly
+he leaped to its handle. Shrilling a wordless war-cry, he charged,
+propelling the whirling, deafening knives straight upon the prone
+legs of Rupe Collins. The lawn-mower was sincerely intended to pass
+longitudinally over the body of Mr. Collins from heel to head; and it
+was the time for a death-song. Black Valkyrie hovered in the shrieking
+air.
+
+“Cut his gizzud out!” shrieked Herman, urging on the whirling knives.
+
+They touched and lacerated the shin of Rupe, as, with the supreme agony
+of effort a creature in mortal peril puts forth before succumbing, he
+tore himself free of Herman and got upon his feet.
+
+Herman was up as quickly. He leaped to the wall and seized the
+garden-scythe that hung there.
+
+“I'm go to cut you' gizzud out,” he announced definitely, “an' eat it!”
+
+Rupe Collins had never run from anybody (except his father) in his life;
+he was not a coward; but the present situation was very, very unusual.
+He was already in a badly dismantled condition, and yet Herman and
+Verman seemed discontented with their work: Verman was swinging the
+grass-cutter about for a new charge, apparently still wishing to mow
+him, and Herman had made a quite plausible statement about what he
+intended to do with the scythe.
+
+Rupe paused but for an extremely condensed survey of the horrible
+advance of the brothers, and then, uttering a blood-curdled scream of
+fear, ran out of the stable and up the alley at a speed he had never
+before attained, so that even Dan had hard work to keep within barking
+distance. And a 'cross-shoulder glance, at the corner, revealing Verman
+and Herman in pursuit, the latter waving his scythe overhead, Mr.
+Collins slackened not his gait, but, rather, out of great anguish,
+increased it; the while a rapidly developing purpose became firm in his
+mind--and ever after so remained--not only to refrain from visiting that
+neighbourhood again, but never by any chance to come within a mile of
+it.
+
+From the alley door, Penrod and Sam watched the flight, and were without
+words. When the pursuit rounded the corner, the two looked wanly at
+each other, but neither spoke until the return of the brothers from the
+chase.
+
+Herman and Verman came back, laughing and chuckling.
+
+“Hiyi!” cackled Herman to Verman, as they came, “See 'at ole boy run!”
+
+“Who-ee!” Verman shouted in ecstasy.
+
+“Nev' did see boy run so fas'!” Herman continued, tossing the scythe
+into the wheelbarrow. “I bet he home in bed by viss time!”
+
+Verman roared with delight, appearing to be wholly unconscious that the
+lids of his right eye were swollen shut and that his attire, not too
+finical before the struggle, now entitled him to unquestioned rank as a
+sansculotte. Herman was a similar ruin, and gave as little heed to his
+condition.
+
+Penrod looked dazedly from Herman to Verman and back again. So did Sam
+Williams.
+
+“Herman,” said Penrod, in a weak voice, “you wouldn't HONEST of cut his
+gizzard out, would you?”
+
+“Who? Me? I don' know. He mighty mean ole boy!” Herman shook his head
+gravely, and then, observing that Verman was again convulsed with
+unctuous merriment, joined laughter with his brother. “Sho'! I guess I
+uz dess TALKIN' whens I said 'at! Reckon he thought I meant it, f'm de
+way he tuck an' run. Hiyi! Reckon he thought ole Herman bad man! No,
+suh! I uz dess talkin', 'cause I nev' would cut NObody! I ain' tryin'
+git in no jail--NO, suh!”
+
+Penrod looked at the scythe: he looked at Herman. He looked at the
+lawn-mower, and he looked at Verman. Then he looked out in the yard at
+the rake. So did Sam Williams.
+
+“Come on, Verman,” said Herman. “We ain' go' 'at stove-wood f' supper
+yit.”
+
+Giggling reminiscently, the brothers disappeared leaving silence behind
+them in the carriage-house. Penrod and Sam retired slowly into the
+shadowy interior, each glancing, now and then, with a preoccupied air,
+at the open, empty doorway where the late afternoon sunshine was growing
+ruddy. At intervals one or the other scraped the floor reflectively
+with the side of his shoe. Finally, still without either having made
+any effort at conversation, they went out into the yard and stood,
+continuing their silence.
+
+“Well,” said Sam, at last, “I guess it's time I better be gettin' home.
+So long, Penrod!”
+
+“So long, Sam,” said Penrod, feebly.
+
+With a solemn gaze he watched his friend out of sight. Then he went
+slowly into the house, and after an interval occupied in a unique
+manner, appeared in the library, holding a pair of brilliantly gleaming
+shoes in his hand.
+
+Mr. Schofield, reading the evening paper, glanced frowningly over it at
+his offspring.
+
+“Look, papa,” said Penrod. “I found your shoes where you'd taken 'em
+off in your room, to put on your slippers, and they were all dusty. So I
+took 'em out on the back porch and gave 'em a good blacking. They shine
+up fine, don't they?”
+
+“Well, I'll be d-dud-dummed!” said the startled Mr. Schofield.
+
+Penrod was zigzagging back to normal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV “LITTLE GENTLEMAN”
+
+The midsummer sun was stinging hot outside the little barber-shop next
+to the corner drug store and Penrod, undergoing a toilette preliminary
+to his very slowly approaching twelfth birthday, was adhesive enough to
+retain upon his face much hair as it fell from the shears. There is a
+mystery here: the tonsorial processes are not unagreeable to manhood; in
+truth, they are soothing; but the hairs detached from a boy's head get
+into his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth, and down his neck, and he
+does everywhere itch excruciatingly. Wherefore he blinks, winks, weeps,
+twitches, condenses his countenance, and squirms; and perchance the
+barber's scissors clip more than intended--belike an outlying flange of
+ear.
+
+“Um--muh--OW!” said Penrod, this thing having happened.
+
+“D' I touch y' up a little?” inquired the barber, smiling falsely.
+
+“Ooh--UH!” The boy in the chair offered inarticulate protest, as the
+wound was rubbed with alum.
+
+“THAT don't hurt!” said the barber. “You WILL get it, though, if you
+don't sit stiller,” he continued, nipping in the bud any attempt on the
+part of his patient to think that he already had “it.”
+
+“Pfuff!” said Penrod, meaning no disrespect, but endeavoring to dislodge
+a temporary moustache from his lip.
+
+“You ought to see how still that little Georgie Bassett sits,” the
+barber went on, reprovingly. “I hear everybody says he's the best boy in
+town.”
+
+“Pfuff! PHIRR!” There was a touch of intentional contempt in this.
+
+“I haven't heard nobody around the neighbourhood makin' no such
+remarks,” added the barber, “about nobody of the name of Penrod
+Schofield.”
+
+“Well,” said Penrod, clearing his mouth after a struggle, “who wants 'em
+to? Ouch!”
+
+“I hear they call Georgie Bassett the 'little gentleman,'” ventured the
+barber, provocatively, meeting with instant success.
+
+“They better not call ME that,” returned Penrod truculently. “I'd like
+to hear anybody try. Just once, that's all! I bet they'd never try it
+ag----OUCH!”
+
+“Why? What'd you do to 'em?”
+
+“It's all right what I'd DO! I bet they wouldn't want to call me that
+again long as they lived!”
+
+“What'd you do if it was a little girl? You wouldn't hit her, would
+you?”
+
+“Well, I'd----Ouch!”
+
+“You wouldn't hit a little girl, would you?” the barber persisted,
+gathering into his powerful fingers a mop of hair from the top of
+Penrod's head and pulling that suffering head into an unnatural
+position. “Doesn't the Bible say it ain't never right to hit the weak
+sex?”
+
+“Ow! SAY, look OUT!”
+
+“So you'd go and punch a pore, weak, little girl, would you?” said the
+barber, reprovingly.
+
+“Well, who said I'd hit her?” demanded the chivalrous Penrod. “I bet I'd
+FIX her though, all right. She'd see!”
+
+“You wouldn't call her names, would you?”
+
+“No, I wouldn't! What hurt is it to call anybody names?”
+
+“Is that SO!” exclaimed the barber. “Then you was intending what I heard
+you hollering at Fisher's grocery delivery wagon driver fer a favour,
+the other day when I was goin' by your house, was you? I reckon I better
+tell him, because he says to me after-WERDS if he ever lays eyes on you
+when you ain't in your own yard, he's goin' to do a whole lot o' things
+you ain't goin' to like! Yessir, that's what he says to ME!”
+
+“He better catch me first, I guess, before he talks so much.”
+
+“Well,” resumed the barber, “that ain't sayin' what you'd do if a young
+lady ever walked up and called you a little gentleman. _I_ want to hear
+what you'd do to her. I guess I know, though--come to think of it.”
+
+“What?” demanded Penrod.
+
+“You'd sick that pore ole dog of yours on her cat, if she had one, I
+expect,” guessed the barber derisively.
+
+“No, I would not!”
+
+“Well, what WOULD you do?”
+
+“I'd do enough. Don't worry about that!”
+
+“Well, suppose it was a boy, then: what'd you do if a boy come up to you
+and says, 'Hello, little gentleman'?”
+
+“He'd be lucky,” said Penrod, with a sinister frown, “if he got home
+alive.”
+
+“Suppose it was a boy twice your size?”
+
+“Just let him try,” said Penrod ominously. “You just let him try. He'd
+never see daylight again; that's all!”
+
+The barber dug ten active fingers into the helpless scalp before him
+and did his best to displace it, while the anguished Penrod, becoming
+instantly a seething crucible of emotion, misdirected his natural
+resentment into maddened brooding upon what he would do to a boy “twice
+his size” who should dare to call him “little gentleman.” The barber
+shook him as his father had never shaken him; the barber buffeted him,
+rocked him frantically to and fro; the barber seemed to be trying to
+wring his neck; and Penrod saw himself in staggering zigzag pictures,
+destroying large, screaming, fragmentary boys who had insulted him.
+
+The torture stopped suddenly; and clenched, weeping eyes began to see
+again, while the barber applied cooling lotions which made Penrod smell
+like a coloured housemaid's ideal.
+
+“Now what,” asked the barber, combing the reeking locks gently, “what
+would it make you so mad fer, to have somebody call you a little
+gentleman? It's a kind of compliment, as it were, you might say. What
+would you want to hit anybody fer THAT fer?”
+
+To the mind of Penrod, this question was without meaning or
+reasonableness. It was within neither his power nor his desire to
+analyze the process by which the phrase had become offensive to him,
+and was now rapidly assuming the proportions of an outrage. He knew only
+that his gorge rose at the thought of it.
+
+“You just let 'em try it!” he said threateningly, as he slid down from
+the chair. And as he went out of the door, after further conversation
+on the same subject, he called back those warning words once more: “Just
+let 'em try it! Just once--that's all _I_ ask 'em to. They'll find out
+what they GET!”
+
+The barber chuckled. Then a fly lit on the barber's nose and he slapped
+at it, and the slap missed the fly but did not miss the nose. The barber
+was irritated. At this moment his birdlike eye gleamed a gleam as it
+fell upon customers approaching: the prettiest little girl in the world,
+leading by the hand her baby brother, Mitchy-Mitch, coming to have
+Mitchy-Mitch's hair clipped, against the heat.
+
+It was a hot day and idle, with little to feed the mind--and the barber
+was a mischievous man with an irritated nose. He did his worst.
+
+Meanwhile, the brooding Penrod pursued his homeward way; no great
+distance, but long enough for several one-sided conflicts with malign
+insulters made of thin air. “You better NOT call me that!” he muttered.
+“You just try it, and you'll get what other people got when THEY tried
+it. You better not ack fresh with ME! Oh, you WILL, will you?” He
+delivered a vicious kick full upon the shins of an iron fence-post,
+which suffered little, though Penrod instantly regretted his
+indiscretion. “Oof!” he grunted, hopping; and went on after bestowing a
+look of awful hostility upon the fence-post. “I guess you'll know better
+next time,” he said, in parting, to this antagonist. “You just let me
+catch you around here again and I'll----” His voice sank to inarticulate
+but ominous murmurings. He was in a dangerous mood.
+
+Nearing home, however, his belligerent spirit was diverted to happier
+interests by the discovery that some workmen had left a caldron of tar
+in the cross-street, close by his father's stable. He tested it, but
+found it inedible. Also, as a substitute for professional chewing-gum
+it was unsatisfactory, being insufficiently boiled down and too thin,
+though of a pleasant, lukewarm temperature. But it had an excess of one
+quality--it was sticky. It was the stickiest tar Penrod had ever used
+for any purposes whatsoever, and nothing upon which he wiped his hands
+served to rid them of it; neither his polka-dotted shirt waist nor his
+knickerbockers; neither the fence, nor even Duke, who came unthinkingly
+wagging out to greet him, and retired wiser.
+
+Nevertheless, tar is tar. Much can be done with it, no matter what its
+condition; so Penrod lingered by the caldron, though from a neighbouring
+yard could be heard the voices of comrades, including that of Sam
+Williams. On the ground about the caldron were scattered chips and
+sticks and bits of wood to the number of a great multitude. Penrod mixed
+quantities of this refuse into the tar, and interested himself in
+seeing how much of it he could keep moving in slow swirls upon the ebon
+surface.
+
+Other surprises were arranged for the absent workmen. The caldron was
+almost full, and the surface of the tar near the rim.
+
+Penrod endeavoured to ascertain how many pebbles and brickbats, dropped
+in, would cause an overflow. Labouring heartily to this end, he
+had almost accomplished it, when he received the suggestion for an
+experiment on a much larger scale. Embedded at the corner of a
+grassplot across the street was a whitewashed stone, the size of a small
+watermelon and serving no purpose whatever save the questionable one of
+decoration. It was easily pried up with a stick; though getting it to
+the caldron tested the full strength of the ardent labourer. Instructed
+to perform such a task, he would have sincerely maintained its
+impossibility but now, as it was unbidden, and promised rather
+destructive results, he set about it with unconquerable energy, feeling
+certain that he would be rewarded with a mighty splash. Perspiring,
+grunting vehemently, his back aching and all muscles strained, he
+progressed in short stages until the big stone lay at the base of the
+caldron. He rested a moment, panting, then lifted the stone, and was
+bending his shoulders for the heave that would lift it over the rim,
+when a sweet, taunting voice, close behind him, startled him cruelly.
+
+“How do you do, LITTLE GENTLEMAN!”
+
+Penrod squawked, dropped the stone, and shouted, “Shut up, you dern
+fool!” purely from instinct, even before his about-face made him aware
+who had so spitefully addressed him.
+
+It was Marjorie Jones. Always dainty, and prettily dressed, she was in
+speckless and starchy white to-day, and a refreshing picture she made,
+with the new-shorn and powerfully scented Mitchy-Mitch clinging to
+her hand. They had stolen up behind the toiler, and now stood laughing
+together in sweet merriment. Since the passing of Penrod's Rupe Collins
+period he had experienced some severe qualms at the recollection of his
+last meeting with Marjorie and his Apache behaviour; in truth, his heart
+instantly became as wax at sight of her, and he would have offered
+her fair speech; but, alas! in Marjorie's wonderful eyes there shone
+a consciousness of new powers for his undoing, and she denied him
+opportunity.
+
+“Oh, OH!” she cried, mocking his pained outcry. “What a way for a LITTLE
+GENTLEMAN to talk! Little gentleman don't say wicked----”
+
+“Marjorie!” Penrod, enraged and dismayed, felt himself stung beyond all
+endurance. Insult from her was bitterer to endure than from any other.
+“Don't you call me that again!”
+
+“Why not, LITTLE GENTLEMAN?”
+
+He stamped his foot. “You better stop!”
+
+Marjorie sent into his furious face her lovely, spiteful laughter.
+
+“Little gentleman, little gentleman, little gentleman!” she said
+deliberately. “How's the little gentleman, this afternoon? Hello, little
+gentleman!”
+
+Penrod, quite beside himself, danced eccentrically. “Dry up!” he howled.
+“Dry up, dry up, dry up, dry UP!”
+
+Mitchy-Mitch shouted with delight and applied a finger to the side
+of the caldron--a finger immediately snatched away and wiped upon a
+handkerchief by his fastidious sister.
+
+“'Ittle gellamun!” said Mitchy-Mitch.
+
+“You better look out!” Penrod whirled upon this small offender with
+grim satisfaction. Here was at least something male that could without
+dishonour be held responsible. “You say that again, and I'll give you
+the worst----”
+
+“You will NOT!” snapped Marjorie, instantly vitriolic. “He'll say just
+whatever he wants to, and he'll say it just as MUCH as he wants to. Say
+it again, Mitchy-Mitch!”
+
+“'Ittle gellamun!” said Mitchy-Mitch promptly.
+
+“Ow-YAH!” Penrod's tone-production was becoming affected by his mental
+condition. “You say that again, and I'll----”
+
+“Go on, Mitchy-Mitch,” cried Marjorie. “He can't do a thing. He don't
+DARE! Say it some more, Mitchy-Mitch--say it a whole lot!”
+
+Mitchy-Mitch, his small, fat face shining with confidence in his
+immunity, complied.
+
+“'Ittle gellamun!” he squeaked malevolently. “'Ittle gellamun! 'Ittle
+gellamun! 'Ittle gellamun!”
+
+The desperate Penrod bent over the whitewashed rock, lifted it, and
+then--outdoing Porthos, John Ridd, and Ursus in one miraculous burst of
+strength--heaved it into the air.
+
+Marjorie screamed.
+
+But it was too late. The big stone descended into the precise midst of
+the caldron and Penrod got his mighty splash. It was far, far beyond his
+expectations.
+
+Spontaneously there were grand and awful effects--volcanic spectacles of
+nightmare and eruption. A black sheet of eccentric shape rose out of the
+caldron and descended upon the three children, who had no time to evade
+it.
+
+After it fell, Mitchy-Mitch, who stood nearest the caldron, was the
+thickest, though there was enough for all. Br'er Rabbit would have fled
+from any of them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV TAR
+
+When Marjorie and Mitchy-Mitch got their breath, they used it vocally;
+and seldom have more penetrating sounds issued from human throats.
+Coincidentally, Marjorie, quite baresark, laid hands upon the largest
+stick within reach and fell upon Penrod with blind fury. He had the
+presence of mind to flee, and they went round and round the caldron,
+while Mitchy-Mitch feebly endeavoured to follow--his appearance, in
+this pursuit, being pathetically like that of a bug fished out of an
+ink-well, alive but discouraged.
+
+Attracted by the riot, Samuel Williams made his appearance, vaulting a
+fence, and was immediately followed by Maurice Levy and Georgie Bassett.
+They stared incredulously at the extraordinary spectacle before them.
+
+“Little GEN-TIL-MUN!” shrieked Marjorie, with a wild stroke that landed
+full upon Penrod's tarry cap.
+
+“OOOCH!” bleated Penrod.
+
+“It's Penrod!” shouted Sam Williams, recognizing him by the voice. For
+an instant he had been in some doubt.
+
+“Penrod Schofield!” exclaimed Georgie Bassett. “WHAT does this mean?”
+ That was Georgie's style, and had helped to win him his title.
+
+Marjorie leaned, panting, upon her stick. “I cu-called--uh--
+him--oh!” she sobbed--“I called him a lul-little--oh--gentleman!
+And oh--lul-look!--oh! lul-look at my du-dress! Lul-look at
+Mumitchy--oh--Mitch--oh!”
+
+Unexpectedly, she smote again--with results--and then, seizing the
+indistinguishable hand of Mitchy-Mitch, she ran wailing homeward down
+the street.
+
+“'Little gentleman'?” said Georgie Bassett, with some evidences of
+disturbed complacency. “Why, that's what they call ME!”
+
+“Yes, and you ARE one, too!” shouted the maddened Penrod. “But you
+better not let anybody call ME that! I've stood enough around here for
+one day, and you can't run over ME, Georgie Bassett. Just you put that
+in your gizzard and smoke it!”
+
+“Anybody has a perfect right,” said Georgie, with, dignity, “to call a
+person a little gentleman. There's lots of names nobody ought to call,
+but this one's a NICE----”
+
+“You better look out!”
+
+Unavenged bruises were distributed all over Penrod, both upon his body
+and upon his spirit. Driven by subtle forces, he had dipped his hands in
+catastrophe and disaster: it was not for a Georgie Bassett to beard him.
+Penrod was about to run amuck.
+
+“I haven't called you a little gentleman, yet,” said Georgie. “I only
+said it. Anybody's got a right to SAY it.”
+
+“Not around ME! You just try it again and----”
+
+“I shall say it,” returned Georgie, “all I please. Anybody in this town
+has a right to SAY 'little gentleman'----”
+
+Bellowing insanely, Penrod plunged his right hand into the caldron,
+rushed upon Georgie and made awful work of his hair and features.
+
+Alas, it was but the beginning! Sam Williams and Maurice Levy screamed
+with delight, and, simultaneously infected, danced about the struggling
+pair, shouting frantically:
+
+“Little gentleman! Little gentleman! Sick him, Georgie! Sick him, little
+gentleman! Little gentleman! Little gentleman!”
+
+The infuriated outlaw turned upon them with blows and more tar, which
+gave Georgie Bassett his opportunity and later seriously impaired the
+purity of his fame. Feeling himself hopelessly tarred, he dipped both
+hands repeatedly into the caldron and applied his gatherings to Penrod.
+It was bringing coals to Newcastle, but it helped to assuage the just
+wrath of Georgie.
+
+The four boys gave a fine imitation of the Laocoon group complicated
+by an extra figure frantic splutterings and chokings, strange cries and
+stranger words issued from this tangle; hands dipped lavishly into the
+inexhaustible reservoir of tar, with more and more picturesque results.
+The caldron had been elevated upon bricks and was not perfectly
+balanced; and under a heavy impact of the struggling group it lurched
+and went partly over, pouring forth a Stygian tide which formed a deep
+pool in the gutter.
+
+It was the fate of Master Roderick Bitts, that exclusive and immaculate
+person, to make his appearance upon the chaotic scene at this juncture.
+All in the cool of a white “sailor suit,” he turned aside from the path
+of duty--which led straight to the house of a maiden aunt--and paused
+to hop with joy upon the sidewalk. A repeated epithet continuously half
+panted, half squawked, somewhere in the nest of gladiators, caught his
+ear, and he took it up excitedly, not knowing why.
+
+“Little gentleman!” shouted Roderick, jumping up and down in childish
+glee. “Little gentleman! Little gentleman! Lit----”
+
+A frightful figure tore itself free from the group, encircled this
+innocent bystander with a black arm, and hurled him headlong. Full
+length and flat on his face went Roderick into the Stygian pool. The
+frightful figure was Penrod.
+
+Instantly, the pack flung themselves upon him again, and, carrying
+them with him, he went over upon Roderick, who from that instant was as
+active a belligerent as any there.
+
+Thus began the Great Tar Fight, the origin of which proved, afterward,
+so difficult for parents to trace, owing to the opposing accounts of
+the combatants. Marjorie said Penrod began it; Penrod said Mitchy-Mitch
+began it; Sam Williams said Georgie Bassett began it; Georgie and
+Maurice Levy said Penrod began it; Roderick Bitts, who had not
+recognized his first assailant, said Sam Williams began it.
+
+Nobody thought of accusing the barber. But the barber did not begin it;
+it was the fly on the barber's nose that began it--though, of course,
+something else began the fly. Somehow, we never manage to hang the real
+offender.
+
+The end came only with the arrival of Penrod's mother, who had been
+having a painful conversation by telephone with Mrs. Jones, the mother
+of Marjorie, and came forth to seek an errant son. It is a mystery how
+she was able to pick out her own, for by the time she got there his
+voice was too hoarse to be recognizable. Mr. Schofield's version of
+things was that Penrod was insane. “He's a stark, raving lunatic!”
+ declared the father, descending to the library from a before-dinner
+interview with the outlaw, that evening. “I'd send him to military
+school, but I don't believe they'd take him. Do you know WHY he says all
+that awfulness happened?”
+
+“When Margaret and I were trying to scrub him,” responded Mrs. Schofield
+wearily, “he said 'everybody' had been calling him names.”
+
+“'Names!'” snorted her husband. “'Little gentleman!' THAT'S the vile
+epithet they called him! And because of it he wrecks the peace of six
+homes!”
+
+“SH! Yes; he told us about it,” said Mrs. Schofield, moaning. “He told
+us several hundred times, I should guess, though I didn't count. He's
+got it fixed in his head, and we couldn't get it out. All we could do
+was to put him in the closet. He'd have gone out again after those boys
+if we hadn't. I don't know WHAT to make of him!”
+
+“He's a mystery to ME!” said her husband. “And he refuses to explain
+why he objects to being called 'little gentleman.' Says he'd do the same
+thing--and worse--if anybody dared to call him that again. He said if
+the President of the United States called him that he'd try to whip him.
+How long did you have him locked up in the closet?”
+
+“SH!” said Mrs. Schofield warningly. “About two hours; but I don't think
+it softened his spirit at all, because when I took him to the barber's
+to get his hair clipped again, on account of the tar in it, Sammy
+Williams and Maurice Levy were there for the same reason, and they just
+WHISPERED 'little gentleman,' so low you could hardly hear them--and
+Penrod began fighting with them right before me, and it was really all
+the barber and I could do to drag him away from them. The barber was
+very kind about it, but Penrod----”
+
+“I tell you he's a lunatic!” Mr. Schofield would have said the same
+thing of a Frenchman infuriated by the epithet “camel.” The philosophy
+of insult needs expounding.
+
+“SH!” said Mrs. Schofield. “It does seem a kind of frenzy.”
+
+“Why on earth should any sane person mind being called----”
+
+“SH!” said Mrs. Schofield. “It's beyond ME!”
+
+“What are you SH-ing me for?” demanded Mr. Schofield explosively.
+
+“SH!” said Mrs. Schofield. “It's Mr. Kinosling, the new rector of Saint
+Joseph's.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“SH! On the front porch with Margaret; he's going to stay for dinner. I
+do hope----”
+
+“Bachelor, isn't he?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“OUR old minister was speaking of him the other day,” said Mr.
+Schofield, “and he didn't seem so terribly impressed.”
+
+“SH! Yes; about thirty, and of course so superior to most of Margaret's
+friends--boys home from college. She thinks she likes young Robert
+Williams, I know--but he laughs so much! Of course there isn't any
+comparison. Mr. Kinosling talks so intellectually; it's a good thing for
+Margaret to hear that kind of thing, for a change and, of course, he's
+very spiritual. He seems very much interested in her.” She paused to
+muse. “I think Margaret likes him; he's so different, too. It's the
+third time he's dropped in this week, and I----”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Schofield grimly, “if you and Margaret want him to come
+again, you'd better not let him see Penrod.”
+
+“But he's asked to see him; he seems interested in meeting all the
+family. And Penrod nearly always behaves fairly well at table.”
+ She paused, and then put to her husband a question referring to his
+interview with Penrod upstairs. “Did you--did you--do it?”
+
+“No,” he answered gloomily. “No, I didn't, but----” He was interrupted
+by a violent crash of china and metal in the kitchen, a shriek from
+Della, and the outrageous voice of Penrod. The well-informed Della,
+ill-inspired to set up for a wit, had ventured to address the scion of
+the house roguishly as “little gentleman,” and Penrod, by means of the
+rapid elevation of his right foot, had removed from her supporting
+hands a laden tray. Both parents, started for the kitchen, Mr. Schofield
+completing his interrupted sentence on the way.
+
+“But I will, now!”
+
+The rite thus promised was hastily but accurately performed in that
+apartment most distant from the front porch; and, twenty minutes later,
+Penrod descended to dinner. The Rev. Mr. Kinosling had asked for the
+pleasure of meeting him, and it had been decided that the only course
+possible was to cover up the scandal for the present, and to offer an
+undisturbed and smiling family surface to the gaze of the visitor.
+
+Scorched but not bowed, the smouldering Penrod was led forward for the
+social formulae simultaneously with the somewhat bleak departure of
+Robert Williams, who took his guitar with him, this time, and went in
+forlorn unconsciousness of the powerful forces already set in secret
+motion to be his allies.
+
+The punishment just undergone had but made the haughty and unyielding
+soul of Penrod more stalwart in revolt; he was unconquered. Every time
+the one intolerable insult had been offered him, his resentment had
+become the hotter, his vengeance the more instant and furious. And,
+still burning with outrage, but upheld by the conviction of right, he
+was determined to continue to the last drop of his blood the defense
+of his honour, whenever it should be assailed, no matter how mighty or
+august the powers that attacked it. In all ways, he was a very sore boy.
+
+During the brief ceremony of presentation, his usually inscrutable
+countenance wore an expression interpreted by his father as one of
+insane obstinacy, while Mrs. Schofield found it an incentive to inward
+prayer. The fine graciousness of Mr. Kinosling, however, was unimpaired
+by the glare of virulent suspicion given him by this little brother: Mr.
+Kinosling mistook it for a natural curiosity concerning one who might
+possibly become, in time, a member of the family. He patted Penrod upon
+the head, which was, for many reasons, in no condition to be patted with
+any pleasure to the patter. Penrod felt himself in the presence of a new
+enemy.
+
+“How do you do, my little lad,” said Mr. Kinosling. “I trust we shall
+become fast friends.”
+
+To the ear of his little lad, it seemed he said, “A trost we shall
+bick-home fawst frainds.” Mr. Kinosling's pronunciation was, in fact,
+slightly precious; and, the little lad, simply mistaking it for some
+cryptic form of mockery of himself, assumed a manner and expression
+which argued so ill for the proposed friendship that Mrs. Schofield
+hastily interposed the suggestion of dinner, and the small procession
+went in to the dining-room.
+
+“It has been a delicious day,” said Mr. Kinosling, presently; “warm but
+balmy.” With a benevolent smile he addressed Penrod, who sat opposite
+him. “I suppose, little gentleman, you have been indulging in the usual
+outdoor sports of vacation?”
+
+Penrod laid down his fork and glared, open-mouthed at Mr. Kinosling.
+
+“You'll have another slice of breast of the chicken?” Mr. Schofield
+inquired, loudly and quickly.
+
+“A lovely day!” exclaimed Margaret, with equal promptitude and emphasis.
+“Lovely, oh, lovely! Lovely!”
+
+“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!” said Mrs. Schofield, and after a
+glance at Penrod which confirmed her impression that he intended to
+say something, she continued, “Yes, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,
+beautiful, beautiful beautiful!”
+
+Penrod closed his mouth and sank back in his chair--and his relatives
+took breath.
+
+Mr. Kinosling looked pleased. This responsive family, with its ready
+enthusiasm, made the kind of audience he liked. He passed a delicate
+white hand gracefully over his tall, pale forehead, and smiled
+indulgently.
+
+“Youth relaxes in summer,” he said. “Boyhood is the age of relaxation;
+one is playful, light, free, unfettered. One runs and leaps and enjoys
+one's self with one's companions. It is good for the little lads to play
+with their friends; they jostle, push, and wrestle, and simulate little,
+happy struggles with one another in harmless conflict. The young muscles
+are toughening. It is good. Boyish chivalry develops, enlarges, expands.
+The young learn quickly, intuitively, spontaneously. They perceive the
+obligations of noblesse oblige. They begin to comprehend the necessity
+of caste and its requirements. They learn what birth means--ah,--that
+is, they learn what it means to be well born. They learn courtesy in
+their games; they learn politeness, consideration for one another in
+their pastimes, amusements, lighter occupations. I make it my pleasure
+to join them often, for I sympathize with them in all their wholesome
+joys as well as in their little bothers and perplexities. I understand
+them, you see; and let me tell you it is no easy matter to understand
+the little lads and lassies.” He sent to each listener his beaming
+glance, and, permitting it to come to rest upon Penrod, inquired:
+
+“And what do you say to that, little gentleman?”
+
+Mr. Schofield uttered a stentorian cough. “More? You'd better have some
+more chicken! More! Do!”
+
+“More chicken!” urged Margaret simultaneously. “Do please! Please! More!
+Do! More!”
+
+“Beautiful, beautiful,” began Mrs. Schofield. “Beautiful, beautiful,
+beautiful, beautiful----”
+
+It is not known in what light Mr. Kinosling viewed the expression of
+Penrod's face. Perhaps he mistook it for awe; perhaps he received
+no impression at all of its extraordinary quality. He was a rather
+self-engrossed young man, just then engaged in a double occupation, for
+he not only talked, but supplied from his own consciousness a critical
+though favourable auditor as well, which of course kept him quite busy.
+Besides, it is oftener than is expected the case that extremely peculiar
+expressions upon the countenances of boys are entirely overlooked,
+and suggest nothing to the minds of people staring straight at them.
+Certainly Penrod's expression--which, to the perception of his family,
+was perfectly horrible--caused not the faintest perturbation in the
+breast of Mr. Kinosling.
+
+Mr. Kinosling waived the chicken, and continued to talk. “Yes, I think
+I may claim to understand boys,” he said, smiling thoughtfully. “One
+has been a boy one's self. Ah, it is not all playtime! I hope our young
+scholar here does not overwork himself at his Latin, at his classics,
+as I did, so that at the age of eight years I was compelled to wear
+glasses. He must be careful not to strain the little eyes at his
+scholar's tasks, not to let the little shoulders grow round over his
+scholar's desk. Youth is golden; we should keep it golden, bright,
+glistening. Youth should frolic, should be sprightly; it should play its
+cricket, its tennis, its hand-ball. It should run and leap; it should
+laugh, should sing madrigals and glees, carol with the lark, ring out in
+chanties, folk-songs, ballads, roundelays----”
+
+He talked on. At any instant Mr. Schofield held himself ready to cough
+vehemently and shout, “More chicken,” to drown out Penrod in case the
+fatal words again fell from those eloquent lips; and Mrs. Schofield and
+Margaret kept themselves prepared at all times to assist him. So passed
+a threatening meal, which Mrs. Schofield hurried, by every means with
+decency, to its conclusion. She felt that somehow they would all be
+safer out in the dark of the front porch, and led the way thither as
+soon as possible.
+
+“No cigar, I thank you.” Mr. Kinosling, establishing himself in a wicker
+chair beside Margaret, waved away her father's proffer. “I do not smoke.
+I have never tasted tobacco in any form.” Mrs. Schofield was confirmed
+in her opinion that this would be an ideal son-in-law. Mr. Schofield was
+not so sure.
+
+“No,” said Mr. Kinosling. “No tobacco for me. No cigar, no pipe, no
+cigarette, no cheroot. For me, a book--a volume of poems, perhaps.
+Verses, rhymes, lines metrical and cadenced--those are my dissipation.
+Tennyson by preference: 'Maud,' or 'Idylls of the King'--poetry of the
+sound Victorian days; there is none later. Or Longfellow will rest me
+in a tired hour. Yes; for me, a book, a volume in the hand, held lightly
+between the fingers.”
+
+Mr. Kinosling looked pleasantly at his fingers as he spoke, waving his
+hand in a curving gesture which brought it into the light of a window
+faintly illumined from the interior of the house. Then he passed those
+graceful fingers over his hair, and turned toward Penrod, who was
+perched upon the railing in a dark corner.
+
+“The evening is touched with a slight coolness,” said Mr. Kinosling.
+“Perhaps I may request the little gentleman----”
+
+“B'gr-r-RUFF!” coughed Mr. Schofield. “You'd better change your mind
+about a cigar.”
+
+“No, I thank you. I was about to request the lit----”
+
+“DO try one,” Margaret urged. “I'm sure papa's are nice ones. Do
+try----”
+
+“No, I thank you. I remarked a slight coolness in the air, and my hat is
+in the hallway. I was about to request----”
+
+“I'll get it for you,” said Penrod suddenly.
+
+“If you will be so good,” said Mr. Kinosling. “It is a black bowler hat,
+little gentleman, and placed upon a table in the hall.”
+
+“I know where it is.” Penrod entered the door, and a feeling of relief,
+mutually experienced, carried from one to another of his three relatives
+their interchanged congratulations that he had recovered his sanity.
+
+“'The day is done, and the darkness,'” began Mr. Kinosling--and recited
+that poem entire. He followed it with “The Children's Hour,” and after a
+pause, at the close, to allow his listeners time for a little reflection
+upon his rendition, he passed his handagain over his head, and called,
+in the direction of the doorway:
+
+“I believe I will take my hat now, little gentleman.”
+
+“Here it is,” said Penrod, unexpectedly climbing over the porch railing,
+in the other direction. His mother and father and Margaret had supposed
+him to be standing in the hallway out of deference, and because he
+thought it tactful not to interrupt the recitations. All of them
+remembered, later, that this supposed thoughtfulness on his part struck
+them as unnatural.
+
+“Very good, little gentleman!” said Mr. Kinosling, and being somewhat
+chilled, placed the hat firmly upon his head, pulling it down as far
+as it would go. It had a pleasant warmth, which he noticed at once. The
+next instant, he noticed something else, a peculiar sensation of the
+scalp--a sensation which he was quite unable to define. He lifted his
+hand to take the hat off, and entered upon a strange experience: his hat
+seemed to have decided to remain where it was.
+
+“Do you like Tennyson as much as Longfellow, Mr. Kinosling?” inquired
+Margaret.
+
+“I--ah--I cannot say,” he returned absently. “I--ah--each has his
+own--ugh! flavour and savour, each his--ah--ah----”
+
+Struck by a strangeness in his tone, she peered at him curiously through
+the dusk. His outlines were indistinct, but she made out that his arms
+were, uplifted in a singular gesture. He seemed to be wrenching at his
+head.
+
+“Is--is anything the matter?” she asked anxiously. “Mr. Kinosling, are
+you ill?”
+
+“Not at--ugh!--all,” he replied, in the same odd tone. “I--ah--I
+believe--UGH!”
+
+He dropped his hands from his hat, and rose. His manner was
+slightly agitated. “I fear I may have taken a trifling--ah--cold.
+I should--ah--perhaps be--ah--better at home. I will--ah--say
+good-night.”
+
+At the steps, he instinctively lifted his hand to remove his hat,
+but did not do so, and, saying “Goodnight,” again in a frigid voice,
+departed with visible stiffness from that house, to return no more.
+
+“Well, of all----!” cried Mrs. Schofield, astounded. “What was the
+matter? He just went--like that!” She made a flurried gesture. “In
+heaven's name, Margaret, what DID you say to him?”
+
+“_I_!” exclaimed Margaret indignantly. “Nothing! He just WENT!”
+
+“Why, he didn't even take off his hat when he said good-night!” said
+Mrs. Schofield.
+
+Margaret, who had crossed to the doorway, caught the ghost of a whisper
+behind her, where stood Penrod.
+
+“YOU BET HE DIDN'T!”
+
+He knew not that he was overheard.
+
+A frightful suspicion flashed through Margaret's mind--a suspicion that
+Mr. Kinosling's hat would have to be either boiled off or shaved off.
+With growing horror she recalled Penrod's long absence when he went to
+bring the hat.
+
+“Penrod,” she cried, “let me see your hands!”
+
+She had toiled at those hands herself late that afternoon, nearly
+scalding her own, but at last achieving a lily purity.
+
+“Let me see your hands!”
+
+She seized them.
+
+Again they were tarred!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI THE QUIET AFTERNOON
+
+Perhaps middle-aged people might discern Nature's real intentions in the
+matter of pain if they would examine a boy's punishments and sorrows,
+for he prolongs neither beyond their actual duration. With a boy,
+trouble must be of Homeric dimensions to last overnight. To him, every
+next day is really a new day. Thus, Penrod woke, next morning, with
+neither the unspared rod, nor Mr. Kinosling in his mind. Tar, itself,
+so far as his consideration of it went, might have been an undiscovered
+substance. His mood was cheerful and mercantile; some process having
+worked mysteriously within him, during the night, to the result that
+his first waking thought was of profits connected with the sale of old
+iron--or perhaps a ragman had passed the house, just before he woke.
+
+By ten o'clock he had formed a partnership with the indeed amiable Sam,
+and the firm of Schofield and Williams plunged headlong into commerce.
+Heavy dealings in rags, paper, old iron and lead gave the firm a balance
+of twenty-two cents on the evening of the third day; but a venture in
+glassware, following, proved disappointing on account of the scepticism
+of all the druggists in that part of town, even after seven laborious
+hours had been spent in cleansing a wheelbarrow-load of old medicine
+bottles with hydrant water and ashes. Likewise, the partners were
+disheartened by their failure to dispose of a crop of “greens,” although
+they had uprooted specimens of that decorative and unappreciated flower,
+the dandelion, with such persistence and energy that the Schofields' and
+Williams' lawns looked curiously haggard for the rest of that summer.
+
+The fit passed: business languished; became extinct. The dog-days had
+set in.
+
+One August afternoon was so hot that even boys sought indoor shade. In
+the dimness of the vacant carriage-house of the stable, lounged Masters
+Penrod Schofield, Samuel Williams, Maurice Levy, Georgie Bassett, and
+Herman. They sat still and talked. It is a hot day, in rare truth, when
+boys devote themselves principally to conversation, and this day was
+that hot.
+
+Their elders should beware such days. Peril hovers near when the
+fierceness of weather forces inaction and boys in groups are quiet.
+The more closely volcanoes, Western rivers, nitroglycerin, and boys
+are pent, the deadlier is their action at the point of outbreak. Thus,
+parents and guardians should look for outrages of the most singular
+violence and of the most peculiar nature during the confining weather of
+February and August.
+
+The thing which befell upon this broiling afternoon began to brew and
+stew peacefully enough. All was innocence and languor; no one could have
+foretold the eruption.
+
+They were upon their great theme: “When I get to be a man!” Being human,
+though boys, they considered their present estate too commonplace to be
+dwelt upon. So, when the old men gather, they say: “When I was a boy!”
+ It really is the land of nowadays that we never discover.
+
+“When I'm a man,” said Sam Williams, “I'm goin' to hire me a couple of
+coloured waiters to swing me in a hammock and keep pourin' ice-water on
+me all day out o' those waterin'-cans they sprinkle flowers from. I'll
+hire you for one of 'em, Herman.”
+
+“No; you ain' goin' to,” said Herman promptly. “You ain' no flowuh.
+But nev' min' nat, anyway. Ain' nobody goin' haih me whens _I_'m a man.
+Goin' be my own boss. _I_'m go' be a rai'road man!”
+
+“You mean like a superintendent, or sumpthing like that, and sell
+tickets?” asked Penrod.
+
+“Sup'in--nev' min' nat! Sell ticket? NO suh! Go' be a PO'tuh! My uncle a
+po'tuh right now. Solid gole buttons--oh, oh!”
+
+“Generals get a lot more buttons than porters,” said Penrod.
+“Generals----”
+
+“Po'tuhs make the bes' l'vin',” Herman interrupted. “My uncle spen' mo'
+money 'n any white man n'is town.”
+
+“Well, I rather be a general,” said Penrod, “or a senator, or sumpthing
+like that.”
+
+“Senators live in Warshington,” Maurice Levy contributed the
+information. “I been there. Warshington ain't so much; Niag'ra Falls is
+a hundred times as good as Warshington. So's 'Tlantic City, I was there,
+too. I been everywhere there is. I----”
+
+“Well, anyway,” said Sam Williams, raising his voice in order to obtain
+the floor, “anyway, I'm goin' to lay in a hammock all day, and have
+ice-water sprinkled on top o' me, and I'm goin' to lay there all night,
+too, and the next day. I'm goin' to lay there a couple o' years, maybe.”
+
+“I bet you don't!” exclaimed Maurice. “What'd you do in winter?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“What you goin' to do when it's winter, out in a hammock with water
+sprinkled on top o' you all day? I bet you----”
+
+“I'd stay right there,” Sam declared, with strong conviction, blinking
+as he looked out through the open doors at the dazzling lawn and trees,
+trembling in the heat. “They couldn't sprinkle too much for ME!”
+
+“It'd make icicles all over you, and----”
+
+“I wish it would,” said Sam. “I'd eat 'em up.”
+
+“And it'd snow on you----”
+
+“Yay! I'd swaller it as fast as it'd come down. I wish I had a BARREL
+o' snow right now. I wish this whole barn was full of it. I wish they
+wasn't anything in the whole world except just good ole snow.”
+
+Penrod and Herman rose and went out to the hydrant, where they drank
+long and ardently. Sam was still talking about snow when they returned.
+
+“No, I wouldn't just roll in it. I'd stick it all round inside my
+clo'es, and fill my hat. No, I'd freeze a big pile of it all hard, and
+I'd roll her out flat and then I'd carry her down to some ole tailor's
+and have him make me a SUIT out of her, and----”
+
+“Can't you keep still about your ole snow?” demanded Penrod petulantly.
+“Makes me so thirsty I can't keep still, and I've drunk so much now I
+bet I bust. That ole hydrant water's mighty near hot anyway.”
+
+“I'm goin' to have a big store, when I grow up,” volunteered Maurice.
+
+“Candy store?” asked Penrod.
+
+“NO, sir! I'll have candy in it, but not to eat, so much. It's goin' to
+be a deportment store: ladies' clothes, gentlemen's clothes, neckties,
+china goods, leather goods, nice lines in woollings and lace goods----”
+
+“Yay! I wouldn't give a five-for-a-cent marble for your whole store,”
+ said Sam. “Would you, Penrod?”
+
+“Not for ten of 'em; not for a million of 'em! _I_'m goin' to have----”
+
+“Wait!” clamoured Maurice. “You'd be foolish, because they'd be a toy
+deportment in my store where they'd be a hunderd marbles! So, how much
+would you think your five-for-a-cent marble counts for? And when I'm
+keepin' my store I'm goin' to get married.”
+
+“Yay!” shrieked Sam derisively. “MARRIED! Listen!” Penrod and Herman
+joined in the howl of contempt.
+
+“Certumly I'll get married,” asserted Maurice stoutly. “I'll get married
+to Marjorie Jones. She likes me awful good, and I'm her beau.”
+
+“What makes you think so?” inquired Penrod in a cryptic voice.
+
+“Because she's my beau, too,” came the prompt answer. “I'm her beau
+because she's my beau; I guess that's plenty reason! I'll get married to
+her as soon as I get my store running nice.”
+
+Penrod looked upon him darkly, but, for the moment, held his peace.
+
+“Married!” jeered Sam Williams. “Married to Marjorie Jones! You're the
+only boy I ever heard say he was going to get married. I wouldn't
+get married for--why, I wouldn't for--for----” Unable to think of
+any inducement the mere mention of which would not be ridiculously
+incommensurate, he proceeded: “I wouldn't do it! What you want to get
+married for? What do married people do, except just come home tired, and
+worry around and kind of scold? You better not do it, M'rice; you'll be
+mighty sorry.”
+
+“Everybody gets married,” stated Maurice, holding his ground.
+
+“They gotta.”
+
+“I'll bet _I_ don't!” Sam returned hotly. “They better catch me before
+they tell ME I have to. Anyway, I bet nobody has to get married unless
+they want to.”
+
+“They do, too,” insisted Maurice. “They GOTTA!”
+
+“Who told you?”
+
+“Look at what my own papa told me!” cried Maurice, heated with argument.
+“Didn't he tell me your papa had to marry your mamma, or else he
+never'd got to handle a cent of her money? Certumly, people gotta marry.
+Everybody. You don't know anybody over twenty years old that isn't
+married--except maybe teachers.”
+
+“Look at policemen!” shouted Sam triumphantly. “You don't s'pose anybody
+can make policemen get married, I reckon, do you?”
+
+“Well, policemen, maybe,” Maurice was forced to admit. “Policemen and
+teachers don't, but everybody else gotta.”
+
+“Well, I'll be a policeman,” said Sam. “THEN I guess they won't come
+around tellin' me I have to get married. What you goin' to be, Penrod?”
+
+“Chief police,” said the laconic Penrod.
+
+“What you?” Sam inquired of quiet Georgie Bassett.
+
+“I am going to be,” said Georgie, consciously, “a minister.”
+
+This announcement created a sensation so profound that it was followed
+by silence. Herman was the first to speak.
+
+“You mean preachuh?” he asked incredulously. “You go' PREACH?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Georgie, looking like Saint Cecilia at the organ.
+
+Herman was impressed. “You know all 'at preachuh talk?”
+
+“I'm going to learn it,” said Georgie simply.
+
+“How loud kin you holler?” asked Herman doubtfully.
+
+“He can't holler at all,” Penrod interposed with scorn. “He hollers like
+a girl. He's the poorest hollerer in town!”
+
+Herman shook his head. Evidently he thought Georgie's chance of being
+ordained very slender. Nevertheless, a final question put to the
+candidate by the coloured expert seemed to admit one ray of hope.
+
+“How good kin you clim a pole?”
+
+“He can't climb one at all,” Penrod answered for Georgie. “Over at Sam's
+turning-pole you ought to see him try to----”
+
+“Preachers don't have to climb poles,” Georgie said with dignity.
+
+“GOOD ones do,” declared Herman. “Bes' one ev' _I_ hear, he clim up an'
+down same as a circus man. One n'em big 'vivals outen whens we livin' on
+a fahm, preachuh clim big pole right in a middle o' the church, what
+was to hol' roof up. He clim way high up, an' holler: 'Goin' to heavum,
+goin' to heavum, goin' to heavum NOW. Hallelujah, praise my Lawd!' An'
+he slide down little, an' holler: 'Devil's got a hol' o' my coat-tails;
+devil tryin' to drag me down! Sinnuhs, take wawnun! Devil got a hol' o'
+my coat-tails; I'm a-goin' to hell, oh Lawd!' Nex', he clim up little
+mo', an' yell an' holler: 'Done shuck ole devil loose; goin' straight to
+heavum agin! Goin' to heavum, goin' to heavum, my Lawd!' Nex', he slide
+down some mo' an' holler, 'Leggo my coat-tails, ole devil! Goin' to
+hell agin, sinnuhs! Goin' straight to hell, my Lawd!' An' he clim an' he
+slide, an' he slide, an' he clim, an' all time holler: 'Now 'm a-goin'
+to heavum; now 'm a-goin' to hell! Goin'to heavum, heavum, heavum, my
+Lawd!' Las' he slide all a-way down, jes' a-squallin' an' a-kickin' an'
+a-rarin' up an' squealin', 'Goin' to hell. Goin' to hell! Ole Satum got
+my soul! Goin' to hell! Goin' to hell! Goin' to hell, hell, hell!”
+
+Herman possessed that extraordinary facility for vivid acting which is
+the great native gift of his race, and he enchained his listeners. They
+sat fascinated and spellbound.
+
+“Herman, tell that again!” said Penrod, breathlessly.
+
+Herman, nothing loath, accepted the encore and repeated the Miltonic
+episode, expanding it somewhat, and dwelling with a fine art upon those
+portions of the narrative which he perceived to be most exciting to his
+audience. Plainly, they thrilled less to Paradise gained than to its
+losing, and the dreadful climax of the descent into the Pit was the
+greatest treat of all.
+
+The effect was immense and instant. Penrod sprang to his feet.
+
+“Georgie Bassett couldn't do that to save his life,” he declared. “_I_'m
+goin' to be a preacher! I'D be all right for one, wouldn't I, Herman?”
+
+“So am I!” Sam Williams echoed loudly. “I guess I can do it if YOU can.
+I'd be better'n Penrod, wouldn't I, Herman?”
+
+“I am, too!” Maurice shouted. “I got a stronger voice than anybody here,
+and I'd like to know what----”
+
+The three clamoured together indistinguishably, each asserting his
+qualifications for the ministry according to Herman's theory, which had
+been accepted by these sudden converts without question.
+
+“Listen to ME!” Maurice bellowed, proving his claim to at least the
+voice by drowning the others. “Maybe I can't climb a pole so good, but
+who can holler louder'n this? Listen to ME-E-E!”
+
+“Shut up!” cried Penrod, irritated. “Go to heaven; go to hell!”
+
+“Oo-o-oh!” exclaimed Georgie Bassett, profoundly shocked.
+
+Sam and Maurice, awed by Penrod's daring, ceased from turmoil, staring
+wide-eyed.
+
+“You cursed and swore!” said Georgie.
+
+“I did not!” cried Penrod, hotly. “That isn't swearing.”
+
+“You said, 'Go to a big H'!” said Georgie.
+
+“I did not! I said, 'Go to heaven,' before I said a big H. That isn't
+swearing, is it, Herman? It's almost what the preacher said, ain't it,
+Herman? It ain't swearing now, any more--not if you put 'go to heaven'
+with it, is it, Herman? You can say it all you want to, long as you
+say 'go to heaven' first, CAN'T you, Herman? Anybody can say it if
+the preacher says it, can't they, Herman? I guess I know when I ain't
+swearing, don't I, Herman?”
+
+Judge Herman ruled for the defendant, and Penrod was considered to have
+carried his point. With fine consistency, the conclave established
+that it was proper for the general public to “say it,” provided “go to
+heaven” should in all cases precede it. This prefix was pronounced a
+perfect disinfectant, removing all odour of impiety or insult; and, with
+the exception of Georgie Bassett (who maintained that the minister's
+words were “going” and “gone,” not “go”), all the boys proceeded to
+exercise their new privilege so lavishly that they tired of it.
+
+But there was no diminution of evangelical ardour; again were heard the
+clamours of dispute as to which was the best qualified for the ministry,
+each of the claimants appealing passionately to Herman, who, pleased but
+confused, appeared to be incapable of arriving at a decision.
+
+During a pause, Georgie Bassett asserted his prior rights. “Who said
+it first, I'd like to know?” he demanded. “I was going to be a minister
+from long back of to-day, I guess. And I guess I said I was going to be
+a minister right to-day before any of you said anything at all. DIDN'T
+I, Herman? YOU heard me, didn't you, Herman? That's the very thing
+started you talking about it, wasn't it, Herman?”
+
+“You' right,” said Herman. “You the firs' one to say it.”
+
+Penrod, Sam, and Maurice immediately lost faith in Herman.
+
+“What if you did say it first?” Penrod shouted. “You couldn't BE a
+minister if you were a hunderd years old!”
+
+“I bet his mother wouldn't let him be one,” said Sam. “She never lets
+him do anything.”
+
+“She would, too,” retorted Georgie. “Ever since I was little, she----”
+
+“He's too sissy to be a preacher!” cried Maurice. “Listen at his squeaky
+voice!”
+
+“I'm going to be a better minister,” shouted Georgie, “than all three of
+you put together. I could do it with my left hand!”
+
+The three laughed bitingly in chorus. They jeered, derided, scoffed,
+and raised an uproar which would have had its effect upon much stronger
+nerves than Georgie's. For a time he contained his rising choler and
+chanted monotonously, over and over: “I COULD! I COULD, TOO! I COULD!
+I COULD, TOO!” But their tumult wore upon him, and he decided to avail
+himself of the recent decision whereby a big H was rendered innocuous
+and unprofane. Having used the expression once, he found it comforting,
+and substituted it for: “I could! I could, too!”
+
+But it relieved him only temporarily. His tormentors were unaffected
+by it and increased their howlings, until at last Georgie lost his head
+altogether. Badgered beyond bearing, his eyes shining with a wild light,
+he broke through the besieging trio, hurling little Maurice from his
+path with a frantic hand.
+
+“I'll show you!” he cried, in this sudden frenzy. “You give me a chance,
+and I'll prove it right NOW!”
+
+“That's talkin' business!” shouted Penrod. “Everybody keep still a
+minute. Everybody!”
+
+He took command of the situation at once, displaying a fine capacity for
+organization and system. It needed only a few minutes to set order in
+the place of confusion and to determine, with the full concurrence of
+all parties, the conditions under which Georgie Bassett was to defend
+his claim by undergoing what may be perhaps intelligibly defined as the
+Herman test. Georgie declared he could do it easily. He was in a state
+of great excitement and in no condition to think calmly or, probably, he
+would not have made the attempt at all. Certainly he was overconfident.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII CONCLUSION OF THE QUIET AFTERNOON
+
+It was during the discussion of the details of this enterprise that
+Georgie's mother, a short distance down the street, received a few
+female callers, who came by appointment to drink a glass of iced tea
+with her, and to meet the Rev. Mr. Kinosling. Mr. Kinosling was proving
+almost formidably interesting to the women and girls of his own
+and other flocks. What favour of his fellow clergymen a slight
+precociousness of manner and pronunciation cost him was more than
+balanced by the visible ecstasies of ladies. They blossomed at his
+touch.
+
+He had just entered Mrs. Bassett's front door, when the son of the
+house, followed by an intent and earnest company of four, opened the
+alley gate and came into the yard. The unconscious Mrs. Bassett was
+about to have her first experience of a fatal coincidence. It was her
+first, because she was the mother of a boy so well behaved that he had
+become a proverb of transcendency. Fatal coincidences were plentiful
+in the Schofield and Williams families, and would have been familiar to
+Mrs. Bassett had Georgie been permitted greater intimacy with Penrod and
+Sam.
+
+Mr. Kinosling sipped his iced tea and looked about, him approvingly.
+Seven ladies leaned forward, for it was to be seen that he meant to
+speak.
+
+“This cool room is a relief,” he said, waving a graceful hand in
+a neatly limited gesture, which everybody's eyes followed, his own
+included. “It is a relief and a retreat. The windows open, the blinds
+closed--that is as it should be. It is a retreat, a fastness, a bastion
+against the heat's assault. For me, a quiet room--a quiet room and a
+book, a volume in the hand, held lightly between the fingers. A volume
+of poems, lines metrical and cadenced; something by a sound Victorian.
+We have no later poets.”
+
+“Swinburne?” suggested Miss Beam, an eager spinster. “Swinburne, Mr.
+Kinosling? Ah, SWINBURNE!”
+
+“Not Swinburne,” said Mr. Kinosling chastely. “No.”
+
+That concluded all the remarks about Swinburne.
+
+
+Miss Beam retired in confusion behind another lady; and somehow there
+became diffused an impression that Miss Beam was erotic.
+
+“I do not observe your manly little son,” Mr. Kinosling addressed his
+hostess.
+
+“He's out playing in the yard,” Mrs. Bassett returned. “I heard his
+voice just now, I think.”
+
+“Everywhere I hear wonderful report of him,” said Mr. Kinosling. “I
+may say that I understand boys, and I feel that he is a rare, a fine, a
+pure, a lofty spirit. I say spirit, for spirit is the word I hear spoken
+of him.”
+
+A chorus of enthusiastic approbation affirmed the accuracy of this
+proclamation, and Mrs. Bassett flushed with pleasure. Georgie's
+spiritual perfection was demonstrated by instances of it, related by
+the visitors; his piety was cited, and wonderful things he had said were
+quoted.
+
+“Not all boys are pure, of fine spirit, of high mind,” said Mr.
+Kinosling, and continued with true feeling: “You have a neighbour, dear
+Mrs. Bassett, whose household I indeed really feel it quite impossible
+to visit until such time when better, firmer, stronger handed, more
+determined discipline shall prevail. I find Mr. and Mrs. Schofield and
+their daughter charming----”
+
+Three or four ladies said “Oh!” and spoke a name simultaneously. It was
+as if they had said, “Oh, the bubonic plague!”
+
+“Oh! Penrod Schofield!”
+
+“Georgie does not play with him,” said Mrs. Bassett quickly--“that
+is, he avoids him as much as he can without hurting Penrod's feelings.
+Georgie is very sensitive to giving pain. I suppose a mother should not
+tell these things, and I know people who talk about their own children
+are dreadful bores, but it was only last Thursday night that Georgie
+looked up in my face so sweetly, after he had said his prayers and his
+little cheeks flushed, as he said: 'Mamma, I think it would be right for
+me to go more with Penrod. I think it would make him a better boy.'”
+
+A sibilance went about the room. “Sweet! How sweet! The sweet little
+soul! Ah, SWEET!”
+
+“And that very afternoon,” continued Mrs. Bassett, “he had come home in
+a dreadful state. Penrod had thrown tar all over him.”
+
+“Your son has a forgiving spirit!” said Mr. Kinosling with vehemence. “A
+too forgiving spirit, perhaps.” He set down his glass. “No more, I thank
+you. No more cake, I thank you. Was it not Cardinal Newman who said----”
+
+He was interrupted by the sounds of an altercation just outside the
+closed blinds of the window nearest him.
+
+“Let him pick his tree!” It was the voice of Samuel Williams. “Didn't we
+come over here to give him one of his own trees? Give him a fair show,
+can't you?”
+
+“The little lads!” Mr. Kinosling smiled. “They have their games, their
+outdoor sports, their pastimes. The young muscles are toughening. The
+sun will not harm them. They grow; they expand; they learn. They learn
+fair play, honour, courtesy, from one another, as pebbles grow round
+in the brook. They learn more from themselves than from us. They take
+shape, form, outline. Let them.”
+
+“Mr. Kinosling!” Another spinster--undeterred by what had happened
+to Miss Beam--leaned fair forward, her face shining and ardent. “Mr.
+Kinosling, there's a question I DO wish to ask you.”
+
+“My dear Miss Cosslit,” Mr. Kinosling responded, again waving his hand
+and watching it, “I am entirely at your disposal.”
+
+“WAS Joan of Arc,” she asked fervently, “inspired by spirits?”
+
+He smiled indulgently. “Yes--and no,” he said. “One must give both
+answers. One must give the answer, yes; one must give the answer, no.”
+
+“Oh, THANK you!” said Miss Cosslit, blushing.
+
+“She's one of my great enthusiasms, you know.”
+
+“And I have a question, too,” urged Mrs. Lora Rewbush, after a moment's
+hasty concentration. “'I've never been able to settle it for myself, but
+NOW----”
+
+“Yes?” said Mr. Kinosling encouragingly.
+
+“Is--ah--is--oh, yes: Is Sanskrit a more difficult language than
+Spanish, Mr. Kinosling?”
+
+“It depends upon the student,” replied the oracle smiling. “One must not
+look for linguists everywhere. In my own especial case--if one may cite
+one's self as an example--I found no great, no insurmountable difficulty
+in mastering, in conquering either.”
+
+“And may _I_ ask one?” ventured Mrs. Bassett. “Do you think it is right
+to wear egrets?”
+
+“There are marks of quality, of caste, of social distinction,” Mr.
+Kinosling began, “which must be permitted, allowed, though perhaps
+regulated. Social distinction, one observes, almost invariably
+implies spiritual distinction as well. Distinction of circumstances
+is accompanied by mental distinction. Distinction is hereditary; it
+descends from father to son, and if there is one thing more true
+than 'Like father, like son,' it is--” he bowed gallantly to Mrs.
+Bassett--“it is, 'Like mother, like son.' What these good ladies have
+said this afternoon of YOUR----”
+
+This was the fatal instant. There smote upon all ears the voice of
+Georgie, painfully shrill and penetrating--fraught with protest and
+protracted, strain. His plain words consisted of the newly sanctioned
+and disinfected curse with a big H.
+
+With an ejaculation of horror, Mrs. Bassett sprang to the window and
+threw open the blinds.
+
+Georgie's back was disclosed to the view of the tea-party. He was
+endeavouring to ascend a maple tree about twelve feet from the window.
+Embracing the trunk with arms and legs, he had managed to squirm to a
+point above the heads of Penrod and Herman, who stood close by, watching
+him earnestly--Penrod being obviously in charge of the performance.
+Across the yard were Sam Williams and Maurice Levy, acting as a jury on
+the question of voice-power, and it was to a complaint of theirs that
+Georgie had just replied.
+
+“That's right, Georgie,” said Penrod encouragingly. “They can, too, hear
+you. Let her go!”
+
+“Going to heaven!” shrieked Georgie, squirming up another inch. “Going
+to heaven, heaven, heaven!”
+
+His mother's frenzied attempts to attract his attention failed utterly.
+Georgie was using the full power of his lungs, deafening his own ears to
+all other sounds. Mrs. Bassett called in vain; while the tea-party stood
+petrified in a cluster about the window.
+
+“Going to heaven!” Georgie bellowed. “Going to heaven! Going to heaven,
+my Lord! Going to heaven, heaven, heaven!”
+
+He tried to climb higher, but began to slip downward, his exertions
+causing damage to his apparel. A button flew into the air, and his
+knickerbockers and his waistband severed relations.
+
+“Devil's got my coat-tails, sinners! Old devil's got my coat-tails!” he
+announced appropriately. Then he began to slide.
+
+He relaxed his clasp of the tree and slid to the ground.
+
+“Going to hell!” shrieked Georgie, reaching a high pitch of enthusiasm
+in this great climax. “Going to hell! Going to hell! I'm gone to hell,
+hell, hell!”
+
+With a loud scream, Mrs. Bassett threw herself out of the window,
+alighting by some miracle upon her feet with ankles unsprained.
+
+Mr. Kinosling, feeling that his presence as spiritual adviser was
+demanded in the yard, followed with greater dignity through the front
+door. At the corner of the house a small departing figure collided with
+him violently. It was Penrod, tactfully withdrawing from what promised
+to be a family scene of unusual painfulness.
+
+Mr. Kinosling seized him by the shoulders and, giving way to emotion,
+shook him viciously.
+
+“You horrible boy!” exclaimed Mr. Kinosling. “You ruffianly creature! Do
+you know what's going to happen to you when you grow up? Do you realize
+what you're going to BE!”
+
+With flashing eyes, the indignant boy made know his unshaken purpose. He
+shouted the reply:
+
+“A minister!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII TWELVE
+
+This busy globe which spawns us is as incapable of flattery and as
+intent upon its own affair, whatever that is, as a gyroscope; it keeps
+steadily whirling along its lawful track, and, thus far seeming to hold
+a right of way, spins doggedly on, with no perceptible diminution of
+speed to mark the most gigantic human events--it did not pause to pant
+and recuperate even when what seemed to Penrod its principal purpose
+was accomplished, and an enormous shadow, vanishing westward over its
+surface, marked the dawn of his twelfth birthday.
+
+To be twelve is an attainment worth the struggle. A boy, just twelve, is
+like a Frenchman just elected to the Academy.
+
+Distinction and honour wait upon him. Younger boys show deference to a
+person of twelve: his experience is guaranteed, his judgment, therefore,
+mellow; consequently, his influence is profound. Eleven is not quite
+satisfactory: it is only an approach. Eleven has the disadvantage of
+six, of nineteen, of forty-four, and of sixty-nine. But, like twelve,
+seven is an honourable age, and the ambition to attain it is laudable.
+People look forward to being seven. Similarly, twenty is worthy, and so,
+arbitrarily, is twenty-one; forty-five has great solidity; seventy is
+most commendable and each year thereafter an increasing honour. Thirteen
+is embarrassed by the beginnings of a new colthood; the child becomes a
+youth. But twelve is the very top of boyhood.
+
+Dressing, that morning, Penrod felt that the world was changed from the
+world of yesterday. For one thing, he seemed to own more of it; this
+day was HIS day. And it was a day worth owning; the midsummer sunshine,
+pouring gold through his window, came from a cool sky, and a breeze
+moved pleasantly in his hair as he leaned from the sill to watch the
+tribe of clattering blackbirds take wing, following their leader
+from the trees in the yard to the day's work in the open country. The
+blackbirds were his, as the sunshine and the breeze were his, for they
+all belonged to the day which was his birthday and therefore most surely
+his. Pride suffused him: he was twelve!
+
+His father and his mother and Margaret seemed to understand the
+difference between to-day and yesterday. They were at the table when
+he descended, and they gave him a greeting which of itself marked the
+milestone. Habitually, his entrance into a room where his elders sat
+brought a cloud of apprehension: they were prone to look up in pathetic
+expectancy, as if their thought was, “What new awfulness is he going to
+start NOW?” But this morning they laughed; his mother rose and kissed
+him twelve times, so did Margaret; and his father shouted, “Well, well!
+How's the MAN?”
+
+Then his mother gave him a Bible and “The Vicar of Wakefield”; Margaret
+gave him a pair of silver-mounted hair brushes; and his father gave him
+a “Pocket Atlas” and a small compass.
+
+“And now, Penrod,” said his mother, after breakfast, “I'm going to
+take you out in the country to pay your birthday respects to Aunt Sarah
+Crim.”
+
+Aunt Sarah Crim, Penrod's great-aunt, was his oldest living relative.
+She was ninety, and when Mrs. Schofield and Penrod alighted from a
+carriage at her gate they found her digging with a spade in the garden.
+
+“I'm glad you brought him,” she said, desisting from labour. “Jinny's
+baking a cake I'm going to send for his birthday party. Bring him in the
+house. I've got something for him.”
+
+She led the way to her “sitting-room,” which had a pleasant smell,
+unlike any other smell, and, opening the drawer of a shining old
+what-not, took therefrom a boy's “sling-shot,” made of a forked stick,
+two strips of rubber and a bit of leather.
+
+“This isn't for you,” she said, placing it in Penrod's eager hand.
+“No. It would break all to pieces the first time you tried to shoot
+it, because it is thirty-five years old. I want to send it back to your
+father. I think it's time. You give it to him from me, and tell him
+I say I believe I can trust him with it now. I took it away from him
+thirty-five years ago, one day after he'd killed my best hen with
+it, accidentally, and broken a glass pitcher on the back porch with
+it--accidentally. He doesn't look like a person who's ever done things
+of that sort, and I suppose he's forgotten it so well that he believes
+he never DID, but if you give it to him from me I think he'll remember.
+You look like him, Penrod. He was anything but a handsome boy.”
+
+After this final bit of reminiscence--probably designed to be repeated
+to Mr. Schofield--she disappeared in the direction of the kitchen,
+and returned with a pitcher of lemonade and a blue china dish sweetly
+freighted with flat ginger cookies of a composition that was her own
+secret. Then, having set this collation before her guests, she presented
+Penrod with a superb, intricate, and very modern machine of destructive
+capacities almost limitless. She called it a pocket-knife.
+
+“I suppose you'll do something horrible with it,” she said, composedly.
+“I hear you do that with everything, anyhow, so you might as well do it
+with this, and have more fun out of it. They tell me you're the Worst
+Boy in Town.”
+
+“Oh, Aunt Sarah!” Mrs. Schofield lifted a protesting hand.
+
+“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Crim.
+
+“But on his birthday!”
+
+“That's the time to say it. Penrod, aren't you the Worst Boy in Town?”
+
+Penrod, gazing fondly upon his knife and eating cookies rapidly,
+answered as a matter of course, and absently, “Yes'm.”
+
+“Certainly!” said Mrs. Crim. “Once you accept a thing about yourself
+as established and settled, it's all right. Nobody minds. Boys are just
+people, really.”
+
+“No, no!” Mrs. Schofield cried, involuntarily.
+
+“Yes, they are,” returned Aunt Sarah. “Only they're not quite so awful,
+because they haven't learned to cover themselves all over with little
+pretences. When Penrod grows up he'll be just the same as he is now,
+except that whenever he does what he wants to do he'll tell himself and
+other people a little story about it to make his reason for doing it
+seem nice and pretty and noble.”
+
+“No, I won't!” said Penrod suddenly.
+
+“There's one cookie left,” observed Aunt Sarah. “Are you going to eat
+it?”
+
+“Well,” said her great-nephew, thoughtfully, “I guess I better.”
+
+“Why?” asked the old lady. “Why do you guess you'd 'better'?”
+
+“Well,” said Penrod, with a full mouth, “it might get all dried up if
+nobody took it, and get thrown out and wasted.”
+
+“You're beginning finely,” Mrs. Crim remarked. “A year ago you'd have
+taken the cookie without the same sense of thrift.”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“Nothing. I see that you're twelve years old, that's all. There are more
+cookies, Penrod.” She went away, returning with a fresh supply and the
+observation, “Of course, you'll be sick before the day's over; you might
+as well get a good start.”
+
+Mrs. Schofield looked thoughtful. “Aunt Sarah,” she ventured, “don't you
+really think we improve as we get older?”
+
+“Meaning,” said the old lady, “that Penrod hasn't much chance to escape
+the penitentiary if he doesn't? Well, we do learn to restrain ourselves
+in some things; and there are people who really want someone else to
+take the last cookie, though they aren't very common. But it's all
+right, the world seems to be getting on.” She gazed whimsically upon her
+great-nephew and added, “Of course, when you watch a boy and think about
+him, it doesn't seem to be getting on very fast.”
+
+Penrod moved uneasily in his chair; he was conscious that he was her
+topic but unable to make out whether or not her observations were
+complimentary; he inclined to think they were not. Mrs. Crim settled the
+question for him.
+
+“I suppose Penrod is regarded as the neighbourhood curse?”
+
+“Oh, no,” cried Mrs. Schofield. “He----”
+
+“I dare say the neighbours are right,” continued the old lady placidly.
+“He's had to repeat the history of the race and go through all the
+stages from the primordial to barbarism. You don't expect boys to be
+civilized, do you?”
+
+“Well, I----”
+
+“You might as well expect eggs to crow. No; you've got to take boys as
+they are, and learn to know them as they are.”
+
+“Naturally, Aunt Sarah,” said Mrs. Schofield, “I KNOW Penrod.”
+
+Aunt Sarah laughed heartily. “Do you think his father knows him, too?”
+
+“Of course, men are different,” Mrs. Schofield returned, apologetically.
+“But a mother knows----”
+
+“Penrod,” said Aunt Sarah, solemnly, “does your father understand you?”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“About as much as he'd understand Sitting Bull!” she laughed.
+
+“And I'll tell you what your mother thinks you are, Penrod. Her real
+belief is that you're a novice in a convent.”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“Aunt Sarah!”
+
+“I know she thinks that, because whenever you don't behave like a novice
+she's disappointed in you. And your father really believes that you're
+a decorous, well-trained young business man, and whenever you don't
+live up to that standard you get on his nerves and he thinks you need a
+walloping. I'm sure a day very seldom passes without their both saying
+they don't know what on earth to do with you. Does whipping do you any
+good, Penrod?”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“Go on and finish the lemonade; there's about glassful left. Oh, take
+it, take it; and don't say why! Of COURSE you're a little pig.”
+
+Penrod laughed gratefully, his eyes fixed upon her over the rim of his
+uptilted glass.
+
+“Fill yourself up uncomfortably,” said the old lady. “You're twelve
+years old, and you ought to be happy--if you aren't anything else. It's
+taken over nineteen hundred years of Christianity and some hundreds of
+thousands of years of other things to produce you, and there you sit!”
+
+“Ma'am?”
+
+“It'll be your turn to struggle and muss things up, for the betterment
+of posterity, soon enough,” said Aunt Sarah Crim. “Drink your lemonade!”
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX FANCHON
+
+“Aunt Sarah's a funny old lady,” Penrod observed, on the way back to the
+town. “What's she want me to give papa this old sling for? Last thing
+she said was to be sure not to forget to give it to him. HE don't want
+it; and she said, herself, it ain't any good. She's older than you or
+papa, isn't she?”
+
+“About fifty years older,” answered Mrs. Schofield, turning upon him a
+stare of perplexity. “Don't cut into the leather with your new knife,
+dear; the livery man might ask us to pay if----No. I wouldn't scrape
+the paint off, either--nor whittle your shoe with it. COULDN'T you put
+it up until we get home?”
+
+“We goin' straight home?”
+
+“No. We're going to stop at Mrs. Gelbraith's and ask a strange little
+girl to come to your party, this afternoon.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Her name is Fanchon. She's Mrs. Gelbraith's little niece.”
+
+“What makes her so queer?”
+
+“I didn't say she's queer.”
+
+“You said----”
+
+“No; I mean that she is a stranger. She lives in New York and has come
+to visit here.”
+
+“What's she live in New York for?”
+
+“Because her parents live there. You must be very nice to her, Penrod;
+she has been very carefully brought up. Besides, she doesn't know the
+children here, and you must help to keep her from feeling lonely at your
+party.”
+
+“Yes'm.”
+
+When they reached Mrs. Gelbraith's, Penrod sat patiently humped upon a
+gilt chair during the lengthy exchange of greetings between his mother.
+and Mrs. Gelbraith. That is one of the things a boy must learn to bear:
+when his mother meets a compeer there is always a long and dreary wait
+for him, while the two appear to be using strange symbols of speech,
+talking for the greater part, it seems to him, simultaneously, and
+employing a wholly incomprehensible system of emphasis at other times
+not in vogue. Penrod twisted his legs, his cap and his nose.
+
+“Here she is!” Mrs. Gelbraith cried, unexpectedly, and a dark-haired,
+demure person entered the room wearing a look of gracious social
+expectancy. In years she was eleven, in manner about sixty-five,
+and evidently had lived much at court. She performed a curtsey in
+acknowledgment of Mrs. Schofield's greeting, and bestowed her hand
+upon Penrod, who had entertained no hope of such an honour, showed his
+surprise that it should come to him, and was plainly unable to decide
+what to do about it.
+
+“Fanchon, dear,” said Mrs. Gelbraith, “take Penrod out in the yard for a
+while, and play.”
+
+“Let go the little girl's hand, Penrod,” Mrs. Schofield laughed, as the
+children turned toward the door.
+
+Penrod hastily dropped the small hand, and exclaiming, with simple
+honesty, “Why, _I_ don't want it!” followed Fanchon out into the
+sunshiny yard, where they came to a halt and surveyed each other.
+
+Penrod stared awkwardly at Fanchon, no other occupation suggesting
+itself to him, while Fanchon, with the utmost coolness, made a very
+thorough visual examination of Penrod, favouring him with an estimating
+scrutiny which lasted until he literally wiggled. Finally, she spoke.
+
+“Where do you buy your ties?” she asked.
+
+“What?”
+
+“Where do you buy your neckties? Papa gets his at Skoone's. You ought to
+get yours there. I'm sure the one you're wearing isn't from Skoone's.”
+
+“Skoone's?” Penrod repeated. “Skoone's?”
+
+“On Fifth Avenue,” said Fanchon. “It's a very smart shop, the men say.”
+
+“Men?” echoed Penrod, in a hazy whisper. “Men?”
+
+“Where do your people go in summer?” inquired the lady. “WE go to Long
+Shore, but so many middle-class people have begun coming there, mamma
+thinks of leaving. The middle classes are simply awful, don't you
+think?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“They're so boorjaw. You speak French, of course?”
+
+“Me?”
+
+“We ran over to Paris last year. It's lovely, don't you think? Don't you
+LOVE the Rue de la Paix?”
+
+Penrod wandered in a labyrinth. This girl seemed to be talking, but her
+words were dumfounding, and of course there was no way for him to know
+that he was really listening to her mother. It was his first meeting
+with one of those grown-up little girls, wonderful product of the winter
+apartment and summer hotel; and Fanchon, an only child, was a star of
+the brand. He began to feel resentful.
+
+“I suppose,” she went on, “I'll find everything here fearfully Western.
+Some nice people called yesterday, though. Do you know the Magsworth
+Bittses? Auntie says they're charming. Will Roddy be at your party?”
+
+“I guess he will,” returned Penrod, finding this intelligible. “The
+mutt!”
+
+“Really!” Fanchon exclaimed airily. “Aren't you great pals with him?”
+
+“What's 'pals'?”
+
+“Good heavens! Don't you know what it means to say you're 'great pals'
+with any one? You ARE an odd child!”
+
+It was too much.
+
+“Oh, Bugs!” said Penrod.
+
+This bit of ruffianism had a curious effect. Fanchon looked upon him
+with sudden favour.
+
+“I like you, Penrod!” she said, in an odd way, and, whatever else there
+may have been in her manner, there certainly was no shyness.
+
+“Oh, Bugs!” This repetition may have lacked gallantry, but it was
+uttered in no very decided tone. Penrod was shaken.
+
+“Yes, I do!” She stepped closer to him, smiling. “Your hair is ever so
+pretty.”
+
+Sailors' parrots swear like mariners, they say; and gay mothers ought to
+realize that all children are imitative, for, as the precocious Fanchon
+leaned toward Penrod, the manner in which she looked into his eyes might
+have made a thoughtful observer wonder where she had learned her pretty
+ways.
+
+Penrod was even more confused than he had been by her previous
+mysteries: but his confusion was of a distinctly pleasant and alluring
+nature: he wanted more of it. Looking intentionally into another
+person's eyes is an act unknown to childhood; and Penrod's discovery
+that it could be done was sensational. He had never thought of looking
+into the eyes of Marjorie Jones.
+
+Despite all anguish, contumely, tar, and Maurice Levy, he still secretly
+thought of Marjorie, with pathetic constancy, as his “beau”--though that
+is not how he would have spelled it. Marjorie was beautiful; her
+curls were long and the colour of amber; her nose was straight and
+her freckles were honest; she was much prettier than this accomplished
+visitor. But beauty is not all.
+
+“I do!” breathed Fanchon, softly.
+
+She seemed to him a fairy creature from some rosier world than this. So
+humble is the human heart, it glorifies and makes glamorous almost any
+poor thing that says to it: “I like you!”
+
+Penrod was enslaved. He swallowed, coughed, scratched the back of his
+neck, and said, disjointedly:
+
+“Well--I don't care if you want to. I just as soon.”
+
+“We'll dance together,” said Fanchon, “at your party.”
+
+“I guess so. I just as soon.”
+
+“Don't you want to, Penrod?”
+
+“Well, I'm willing to.”
+
+“No. Say you WANT to!”
+
+“Well----”
+
+He used his toe as a gimlet, boring into the ground, his wide open eyes
+staring with intense vacancy at a button on his sleeve.
+
+His mother appeared upon the porch in departure, calling farewells over
+her shoulder to Mrs. Gelbraith, who stood in the doorway.
+
+“Say it!” whispered Fanchon.
+
+“Well, I just as SOON.”
+
+She seemed satisfied.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
+
+A dancing floor had been laid upon a platform in the yard, when Mrs.
+Schofield and her son arrived at their own abode; and a white and
+scarlet striped canopy was in process of erection overhead, to shelter
+the dancers from the sun. Workmen were busy everywhere under the
+direction of Margaret, and the smitten heart of Penrod began to beat
+rapidly. All this was for him; he was Twelve!
+
+After lunch, he underwent an elaborate toilette and murmured not. For
+the first time in his life he knew the wish to be sand-papered, waxed,
+and polished to the highest possible degree. And when the operation was
+over, he stood before the mirror in new bloom, feeling encouraged to
+hope that his resemblance to his father was not so strong as Aunt Sarah
+seemed to think.
+
+The white gloves upon his hands had a pleasant smell, he found; and, as
+he came down the stairs, he had great content in the twinkling of his
+new dancing slippers. He stepped twice on each step, the better to enjoy
+their effect and at the same time he deeply inhaled the odour of the
+gloves. In spite of everything, Penrod had his social capacities.
+Already it is to be perceived that there were in him the makings of a
+cotillon leader.
+
+Then came from the yard a sound of tuning instruments, squeak of fiddle,
+croon of 'cello, a falling triangle ringing and tinkling to the floor;
+and he turned pale.
+
+Chosen guests began to arrive, while Penrod, suffering from stage-fright
+and perspiration, stood beside his mother, in the “drawing-room,”
+ to receive them. He greeted unfamiliar acquaintances and intimate
+fellow-criminals with the same frigidity, murmuring: “'M glad to see
+y',” to all alike, largely increasing the embarrassment which always
+prevails at the beginning of children's festivities. His unnatural pomp
+and circumstance had so thoroughly upset him, in truth, that Marjorie
+Jones received a distinct shock, now to be related. Doctor Thrope, the
+kind old clergyman who had baptized Penrod, came in for a moment to
+congratulate the boy, and had just moved away when it was Marjorie's
+turn, in the line of children, to speak to Penrod. She gave him what she
+considered a forgiving look, and, because of the occasion, addressed him
+in a perfectly courteous manner.
+
+“I wish you many happy returns of the day, Penrod.”
+
+“Thank you, sir!” he returned, following Dr. Thrope with a glassy
+stare in which there was absolutely no recognition of Marjorie. Then he
+greeted Maurice Levy, who was next to Marjorie: “'M glad to see y'!”
+
+Dumfounded, Marjorie turned aside, and stood near, observing Penrod with
+gravity. It was the first great surprise of her life. Customarily,
+she had seemed to place his character somewhere between that of the
+professional rioter and that of the orang-outang; nevertheless, her
+manner at times just hinted a consciousness that this Caliban was her
+property. Wherefore, she stared at him incredulously as his head bobbed
+up and down, in the dancing-school bow, greeting his guests. Then she
+heard an adult voice, near her, exclaim:
+
+“What an exquisite child!”
+
+Mariorie galanced up--a little consciously, though she was used to
+it--naturally curious to ascertain who was speaking of her. It was Sam
+Williams' mother addressing Mrs. Bassett, both being present to help
+Mrs. Schofield make the festivities festive.
+
+“Exquisite!”
+
+Here was a second heavy surprise for Marjorie: they were not looking
+at her. They were looking with beaming approval at a girl she had never
+seen; a dark and modish stranger of singularly composed and yet modest
+aspect. Her downcast eyes, becoming in one thus entering a crowded room,
+were all that produced the effect of modesty, counteracting something
+about her which might have seemed too assured. She was very slender,
+very dainty, and her apparel was disheartening to the other girls; it
+was of a knowing picturesqueness wholly unfamiliar to them. There was
+a delicate trace of powder upon the lobe of Fanchon's left ear, and
+the outlines of her eyelids, if very closely scrutinized, would have
+revealed successful experimentation with a burnt match.
+
+Marjorie's lovely eyes dilated: she learned the meaning of hatred at
+first sight. Observing the stranger with instinctive suspicion, all
+at once she seemed, to herself, awkward. Poor Marjorie underwent that
+experience which hearty, healthy, little girls and big girls undergo at
+one time or another--from heels to head she felt herself, somehow, too
+THICK.
+
+Fanchon leaned close to Penrod and whispered in his ear:
+
+“Don't you forget!”
+
+Penrod blushed.
+
+Marjorie saw the blush. Her lovely eyes opened even wider, and in them
+there began to grow a light. It was the light of indignation;--at least,
+people whose eyes glow with that light always call it indignation.
+
+Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, approached Fanchon, when she had made
+her courtesy to Mrs. Schofield. Fanchon whispered in Roderick's ear
+also.
+
+“Your hair is pretty, Roddy! Don't forget what you said yesterday!”
+
+Roderick likewise blushed.
+
+Maurice Levy, captivated by the newcomer's appearance, pressed close to
+Roderick.
+
+“Give us an intaduction, Roddy?”
+
+Roddy being either reluctant or unable to perform the rite, Fanchon took
+matters into her own hands, and was presently favourably impressed with
+Maurice, receiving the information that his tie had been brought to him
+by his papa from Skoone's, whereupon she privately informed him that she
+liked wavy hair, and arranged to dance with him. Fanchon also thought
+sandy hair attractive, Sam Williams discovered, a few minutes later, and
+so catholic was her taste that a ring of boys quite encircled her before
+the musicians in the yard struck up their thrilling march, and Mrs.
+Schofield brought Penrod to escort the lady from out-of-town to the
+dancing pavilion.
+
+Headed by this pair, the children sought partners and paraded solemnly
+out of the front door and round a corner of the house. There they found
+the gay marquee; the small orchestra seated on the lawn at one side
+of it, and a punch bowl of lemonade inviting attention, under a tree.
+Decorously the small couples stepped upon the platform, one after
+another, and began to dance.
+
+“It's not much like a children's party in our day,” Mrs. Williams said
+to Penrod's mother. “We'd have been playing 'Quaker-meeting,' 'Clap-in,
+Clap-out,' or 'Going to Jerusalem,' I suppose.”
+
+“Yes, or 'Post-office' and 'Drop-the-handkerchief,'” said Mrs.
+Schofield. “Things change so quickly. Imagine asking little Fanchon
+Gelbraith to play 'London Bridge'! Penrod seems to be having a difficult
+time with her, poor boy; he wasn't a shining light in the dancing
+class.”
+
+However, Penrod's difficulty was not precisely of the kind his mother
+supposed. Fanchon was showing him a new step, which she taught her
+next partner in turn, continuing instructions during the dancing. The
+children crowded the floor, and in the kaleidoscopic jumble of bobbing
+heads and intermingling figures her extremely different style of
+motion was unobserved by the older people, who looked on, nodding time
+benevolently.
+
+Fanchon fascinated girls as well as boys. Many of the former eagerly
+sought her acquaintance and thronged about her between the dances, when,
+accepting the deference due a cosmopolitan and an oracle of the mode,
+she gave demonstrations of the new step to succeeding groups, professing
+astonishment to find it unknown: it had been “all the go,” she
+explained, at the Long Shore Casino for fully two seasons. She
+pronounced “slow” a “Fancy Dance” executed during an intermission by
+Baby Rennsdale and Georgie Bassett, giving it as her opinion that Miss
+Rennsdale and Mr. Bassett were “dead ones”; and she expressed surprise
+that the punch bowl contained lemonade and not champagne.
+
+The dancing continued, the new step gaining instantly in popularity,
+fresh couples adventuring with every number. The word “step” is somewhat
+misleading, nothing done with the feet being vital to the evolutions
+introduced by Fanchon. Fanchon's dance came from the Orient by a
+roundabout way; pausing in Spain, taking on a Gallic frankness in
+gallantry at the Bal Bullier in Paris, combining with a relative from
+the South Seas encountered in San Francisco, flavouring itself with
+a carefree negroid abandon in New Orleans, and, accumulating, too,
+something inexpressible from Mexico and South America, it kept,
+throughout its travels, to the underworld, or to circles where nature
+is extremely frank and rank, until at last it reached the dives of New
+York, when it immediately broke out in what is called civilized
+society. Thereafter it spread, in variously modified forms--some of
+them disinfected--to watering-places, and thence, carried by hundreds of
+older male and female Fanchons, over the country, being eagerly adopted
+everywhere and made wholly pure and respectable by the supreme moral
+axiom that anything is all right if enough people do it. Everybody was
+doing it.
+
+Not quite everybody. It was perhaps some test of this dance that earth
+could furnish no more grotesque sight than that of children doing it.
+
+Earth, assisted by Fanchon, was furnishing this sight at Penrod's party.
+By the time ice-cream and cake arrived, about half the guests had
+either been initiated into the mysteries by Fanchon or were learning
+by imitation, and the education of the other half was resumed with the
+dancing, when the attendant ladies, unconscious of what was happening,
+withdrew into the house for tea.
+
+“That orchestra's a dead one,” Fanchon remarked to Penrod. “We ought to
+liven them up a little!”
+
+She approached the musicians.
+
+“Don't you know,” she asked the leader, “the Slingo Sligo Slide?”
+
+The leader giggled, nodded, rapped with his bow upon his violin; and
+Penrod, following Fanchon back upon the dancing floor, blindly brushed
+with his elbow a solitary little figure standing aloof on the lawn at
+the edge of the platform.
+
+It was Marjorie.
+
+In no mood to approve of anything introduced by Fanchon, she had
+scornfully refused, from the first, to dance the new “step,” and,
+because of its bonfire popularity, found herself neglected in a society
+where she had reigned as beauty and belle. Faithless Penrod, dazed by
+the sweeping Fanchon, had utterly forgotten the amber curls; he had not
+once asked Marjorie to dance. All afternoon the light of indignation had
+been growing brighter in her eyes, though Maurice Levy's defection
+to the lady from New York had not fanned this flame. From the moment
+Fanchon had whispered familiarly in Penrod's ear, and Penrod had
+blushed, Marjorie had been occupied exclusively with resentment against
+that guilty pair. It seemed to her that Penrod had no right to allow a
+strange girl to whisper in his ear; that his blushing, when the strange
+girl did it, was atrocious; and that the strange girl, herself, ought to
+be arrested.
+
+Forgotten by the merrymakers, Marjorie stood alone upon the lawn,
+clenching her small fists, watching the new dance at its high tide,
+and hating it with a hatred that made every inch of her tremble. And,
+perhaps because jealousy is a great awakener of the virtues, she had
+a perception of something in it worse than lack of dignity--something
+vaguely but outrageously reprehensible. Finally, when Penrod brushed by
+her, touched her with his elbow, and, did not even see her, Marjorie's
+state of mind (not unmingled with emotion!) became dangerous. In fact, a
+trained nurse, chancing to observe her at this juncture, would probably
+have advised that she be taken home and put to bed. Marjorie was on the
+verge of hysterics.
+
+She saw Fanchon and Penrod assume the double embrace required by the
+dance; the “Slingo Sligo Slide” burst from the orchestra like the
+lunatic shriek of a gin-maddened nigger; and all the little couples
+began to bob and dip and sway.
+
+Marjorie made a scene. She sprang upon the platform and stamped her
+foot.
+
+“Penrod Schofield!” she shouted. “You BEHAVE yourself!”
+
+The remarkable girl took Penrod by the ear. By his ear she swung him
+away from Fanchon and faced him toward the lawn.
+
+“You march straight out of here!” she commanded.
+
+Penrod marched.
+
+He was stunned; obeyed automatically, without question, and had very
+little realization of what was happening to him. Altogether, and without
+reason, he was in precisely the condition of an elderly spouse detected
+in flagrant misbehaviour. Marjorie, similarly, was in precisely the
+condition of the party who detects such misbehaviour. It may be added
+that she had acted with a promptness, a decision and a disregard of
+social consequences all to be commended to the attention of ladies in
+like predicament.
+
+“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” she raged, when they reached the
+lawn. “Aren't you ashamed of yourself?”
+
+“What for?” he inquired, helplessly.
+
+“You be quiet!”
+
+“But what'd _I_ do, Marjorie? _I_ haven't done anything to you,” he
+pleaded. “I haven't even seen you, all aftern----”
+
+“You be quiet!” she cried, tears filling her eyes. “Keep still! You ugly
+boy! Shut up!”
+
+She slapped him.
+
+He should have understood from this how much she cared for him. But he
+rubbed his cheek and declared ruefully:
+
+“I'll never speak to you again!”
+
+“You will, too!” she sobbed, passionately.
+
+“I will not!”
+
+He turned to leave her, but paused.
+
+His mother, his sister Margaret, and their grownup friends had finished
+their tea and were approaching from the house. Other parents and
+guardians were with them, coming for their children; and there were
+carriages and automobiles waiting in the street. But the “Slingo Slide”
+ went on, regardless.
+
+The group of grown-up people hesitated and came to a halt, gazing at the
+pavilion.
+
+“What are they doing?” gasped Mrs. Williams, blushing deeply. “What is
+it? What IS it?”
+
+“WHAT IS IT?” Mrs. Gelbraith echoed in a frightened whisper. “WHAT----”
+
+“They're Tangoing!” cried Margaret Schofield. “Or Bunny Hugging or
+Grizzly Bearing, or----”
+
+“They're only Turkey Trotting,” said Robert Williams.
+
+With fearful outcries the mothers, aunts, and sisters rushed upon the
+pavilion.
+
+“Of course it was dreadful,” said Mrs. Schofield, an hour later,
+rendering her lord an account of the day, “but it was every bit the
+fault of that one extraordinary child. And of all the quiet, demur
+little things--that is, I mean, when she first came. We all spoke of how
+exquisite she seemed--so well trained, so finished! Eleven years old! I
+never saw anything like her in my life!”
+
+“I suppose it's the New Child,” her husband grunted.
+
+“And to think of her saying there ought to have been champagne in the
+lemonade!”
+
+“Probably she'd forgotten to bring her pocket flask,” he suggested
+musingly.
+
+“But aren't you proud of Penrod?” cried Penrod's mother. “It was just as
+I told you: he was standing clear outside the pavilion----”
+
+“I never thought to see the day! And Penrod was the only boy not doing
+it, the only one to refuse? ALL the others were----”
+
+“Every one!” she returned triumphantly. “Even Georgie Bassett!”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Schofield, patting her on the shoulder. “I guess we can
+hold up our heads at last.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI OVER THE FENCE
+
+Penrod was out in the yard, staring at the empty marquee. The sun was on
+the horizon line, so far behind the back fence, and a western window of
+the house blazed in gold unbearable to the eye: his day was nearly
+over. He sighed, and took from the inside pocket of his new jacket the
+“sling-shot” aunt Sarah Crim had given him that morning.
+
+He snapped the rubbers absently. They held fast; and his next impulse
+was entirely irresistible. He found a shapely stone, fitted it to the
+leather, and drew back the ancient catapult for a shot. A sparrow hopped
+upon a branch between him and the house, and he aimed at the sparrow,
+but the reflection from the dazzling window struck in his eyes as he
+loosed the leather.
+
+He missed the sparrow, but not the window. There was a loud crash,
+and to his horror he caught a glimpse of his father, stricken in
+mid-shaving, ducking a shower of broken glass, glittering razor
+flourishing wildly. Words crashed with the glass, stentorian words,
+fragmentary but collossal.
+
+Penrod stood petrified, a broken sling in his hand. He could hear his
+parent's booming descent of the back stairs, instant and furious; and
+then, red-hot above white lather, Mr. Schofield burst out of the kitchen
+door and hurtled forth upon his son.
+
+“What do you mean?” he demanded, shaking Penrod by the shoulder. “Ten
+minutes ago, for the very first time in our lives, your mother and I
+were saying we were proud of you, and here you go and throw a rock at me
+through the window when I'm shaving for dinner!”
+
+“I didn't!” Penrod quavered. “I was shooting at a sparrow, and the sun
+got in his eyes, and the sling broke----”
+
+“What sling?”
+
+“This'n.”
+
+“Where'd you get that devilish thing? Don't you know I've forbidden you
+a thousand times----”
+
+“It ain't mine,” said Penrod. “It's yours.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the boy meekly. “Aunt Sarah Crim gave it to me this
+morning and told me to give it back to you. She said she took it away
+from you thirty-five years ago. You killed her hen, she said. She told
+me some more to tell you, but I've forgotten.”
+
+“Oh!” said Mr. Schofield.
+
+He took the broken sling in his hand, looked at it long and
+thoughtfully--and he looked longer, and quite as thoughtfully, at
+Penrod. Then he turned away, and walked toward the house.
+
+“I'm sorry, papa,” said Penrod.
+
+Mr. Schofield coughed, and, as he reached the door, called back, but
+without turning his head.
+
+“Never mind, little boy. A broken window isn't much harm.”
+
+When he had gone in, Penrod wandered down the yard to the back fence,
+climbed upon it, and sat in reverie there.
+
+A slight figure appeared, likewise upon a fence, beyond two neighbouring
+yards.
+
+“Yay, Penrod!” called comrade Sam Williams.
+
+“Yay!” returned Penrod, mechanically.
+
+“I caught Billy Blue Hill!” shouted Sam, describing retribution in a
+manner perfectly clear to his friend. “You were mighty lucky to get out
+of it.”
+
+“I know that!”
+
+“You wouldn't of, if it hadn't been for Marjorie.”
+
+“Well, don't I know that?” Penrod shouted, with heat.
+
+“Well, so long!” called Sam, dropping from his fence; and the friendly
+voice came then, more faintly, “Many happy returns of the day, Penrod!”
+
+And now, a plaintive little whine sounded from below Penrod's feet, and,
+looking down, he saw that Duke, his wistful, old, scraggly dog sat in
+the grass, gazing seekingly up at him.
+
+The last shaft of sunshine of that day fell graciously and like a
+blessing upon the boy sitting on the fence. Years afterward, a quiet
+sunset would recall to him sometimes the gentle evening of his twelfth
+birthday, and bring him the picture of his boy self, sitting in rosy
+light upon the fence, gazing pensively down upon his wistful, scraggly,
+little old dog, Duke. But something else, surpassing, he would remember
+of that hour, for, in the side street, close by, a pink skirt flickered
+from behind a shade tree to the shelter of the fence, there was a gleam
+of amber curls, and Penrod started, as something like a tiny white wing
+fluttered by his head, and there came to his ears the sound of a light
+laugh and of light footsteps departing, the laughter tremulous, the
+footsteps fleet.
+
+In the grass, between Duke's forepaws, there lay a white note, folded in
+the shape of a cocked hat, and the sun sent forth a final amazing glory
+as Penrod opened it and read:
+
+“Your my bow.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Penrod, by Booth Tarkington
+
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