On Monday morning Penrod's faith in the coming of another Saturday was flaccid and lustreless. Those Japanese lovers who were promised a reunion after ten thousand years in separate hells were brighter with hope than he was. On Monday Penrod was virtually an agnostic.
Nowhere upon his shining morning face could have been read any eager anticipation of useful knowledge. Of course he had been told that school was for his own good; in fact, he had been told and told and told, but the words conveying this information, meaningless at first, assumed, with each repetition, more and more the character of dull and unsolicited insult.
He was wholly unable to imagine circumstances, present or future, under which any of the instruction and training he was now receiving could be of the slightest possible use or benefit to himself; and when he was informed that such circumstances would frequently arise in his later life, he but felt the slur upon his coming manhood and its power to prevent any such unpleasantness.
If it were possible to place a romantic young Broadway actor and athlete under hushing supervision for six hours a day, compelling him to bend his unremittent attention upon the city directory of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, he could scarce be expected to respond genially to frequent statements that the compulsion was all for his own good. On the contrary, it might be reasonable to conceive his response as taking the form of action, which is precisely the form that Penrod's smouldering impulse yearned to take.
To Penrod school was merely a state of confinement, envenomed by mathematics. For interminable periods he was forced to listen to information concerning matters about which he had no curiosity whatever; and he had to read over and over the dullest passages in books that bored him into stupors, while always there overhung the preposterous task of improvising plausible evasions to conceal the fact that he did not know what he had no wish to know. Likewise, he must always be prepared to avoid incriminating replies to questions that he felt nobody had a real and natural right to ask him. And when his gorge rose and his inwards revolted, the hours became a series of ignoble misadventures and petty disgraces strikingly lacking in privacy.
It was usually upon Wednesday that his sufferings culminated; the nervous strength accumulated during the holiday hours at the end of the week would carry him through Monday and Tuesday; but by Wednesday it seemed ultimately proven that the next Saturday actually never was coming, “this time”, and the strained spirit gave way. Wednesday was the day averaging highest in Penrod's list of absences; but the time came when he felt that the advantages attendant upon his Wednesday “sick headache” did not compensate for its inconveniences.
For one thing, this illness had become so symmetrically recurrent that even the cook felt that he was pushing it too far, and the liveliness of her expression, when he was able to leave his couch and take the air in the backyard at about ten o'clock, became more disagreeable to him with each convalescence. There visibly increased, too, about the whole household, an atmosphere of uncongeniality and suspicion so pronounced that every successive illness was necessarily more severe, and at last the patient felt obliged to remain bedded until almost eleven, from time to time giving forth pathetic little sounds eloquent of anguish triumphing over Stoic endurance, yet lacking a certain conviction of utterance.
Finally, his father enacted, and his mother applied, a new and distinctly special bit of legislation, explaining it with simple candour to the prospective beneficiary.
“Whenever you really ARE sick,” they said, “you can go out and play as soon as you're well—that is, if it happens on Saturday. But when you're sick on a school-day, you'll stay in bed till the next morning. This is going to do you good, Penrod.”
Physically, their opinion appeared to be affirmed, for Wednesday after Wednesday passed without any recurrence of the attack; but the spiritual strain may have been damaging. And it should be added that if Penrod's higher nature did suffer from the strain, he was not unique. For, confirming the effect of Wednesday upon boys in general, it is probable that, if full statistics concerning cats were available, they would show that cats dread Wednesdays, and that their fear is shared by other animals, and would be shared, to an extent by windows, if windows possessed nervous systems. Nor must this probable apprehension on the part of cats and the like be thought mere superstition. Cats have superstitions, it is true; but certain actions inspired by the sight of a boy with a missile in his hand are better evidence of the workings of logic upon a practical nature than of faith in the supernatural.
Moreover, the attention of family physicians and specialists should be drawn to these significant though obscure phenomena; for the suffering of cats is a barometer of the nerve-pressure of boys, and it may be accepted as sufficiently established that Wednesday—after school-hours—is the worst time for cats.
After the promulgation of that parental edict, “You'll stay in bed till the next morning”, four weeks went by unflawed by a single absence from the field of duty; but, when the fifth Wednesday came, Penrod held sore debate within himself before he finally rose. In fact, after rising, and while actually engaged with his toilet, he tentatively emitted the series of little moans that was his wonted preliminary to a quiet holiday at home; and the sound was heard (as intended) by Mr. Schofield, who was passing Penrod's door on his way to breakfast.
“ALL right!” the father said, making use of peculiar and unnecessary emphasis. “Stay in bed till to-morrow morning. Castor-oil, this time, too.”
Penrod had not hoped much for his experiment; nevertheless his rebellious blood was sensibly inflamed by the failure, and he accompanied his dressing with a low murmuring—apparently a bitter dialogue between himself and some unknown but powerful patron.
Thus he muttered:
“Well, they better NOT!” “Well, what can I DO about it?” “Well, I'D show 'em!” “Well, I WILL show 'em!” “Well, you OUGHT to show 'em; that's the wayIdo! I just shake 'em around, and say, 'Here! I guess you don't know who you're talkin' to like that! You better look out!'” “Well, that's the wayI'm goin' to do!” “Well, go on and DO it, then!” “Well, I AM goin'—”
The door of the next room was slightly ajar; now it swung wide, and Margaret appeared.
“Penrod, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Nothin'. None o' your—”
“Well, hurry to breakfast, then; it's getting late.”
Lightly she went, humming a tune, leaving the door of her room open, and the eyes of Penrod, as he donned his jacket, chanced to fall upon her desk, where she had thoughtlessly left a letter—a private missive just begun, and intended solely for the eyes of Mr. Robert Williams, a senior at a far university.
In such a fashion is coincidence the architect of misfortune. Penrod's class in English composition had been instructed, the previous day, to concoct at home and bring to class on Wednesday morning, “a model letter to a friend on some subject of general interest.” Penalty for omission to perform this simple task was definite; whosoever brought no letter would inevitably be “kept in” after school, that afternoon, until the letter was written, and it was precisely a premonition of this misfortune that had prompted Penrod to attempt his experimental moaning upon his father, for, alas! he had equipped himself with no model letter, nor any letter whatever.
In stress of this kind, a boy's creed is that anything is worth a try; but his eye for details is poor. He sees the future too sweepingly and too much as he would have it seldom providing against inconsistencies of evidence that may damage him. For instance, there is a well-known case of two brothers who exhibited to their parents, with pathetic confidence, several imported dried herring on a string, as a proof that the afternoon had been spent, not at a forbidden circus, but with hook and line upon the banks of a neighbouring brook.
So with Penrod. He had vital need of a letter, and there before his eyes, upon Margaret's desk, was apparently the precise thing he needed!
From below rose the voice of his mother urging him to the breakfast-table, warning him that he stood in danger of tardiness at school; he was pressed for time, and acted upon an inspiration that failed to prompt him even to read the letter.
Hurriedly he wrote “Dear freind” at the top of the page Margaret had partially filled. Then he signed himself “Yours respectfuly, Penrod Schofield” at the bottom, and enclosed the missive within a battered volume entitled, “Principles of English Composition.” With that and other books compacted by a strap, he descended to a breakfast somewhat oppressive but undarkened by any misgivings concerning a “letter to a friend on some subject of general interest.” He felt that a difficulty had been encountered and satisfactorily disposed of; the matter could now be dismissed from his mind. He had plenty of other difficulties to take its place.
No; he had no misgivings, nor was he assailed by anything unpleasant in that line, even when the hour struck for the class in English composition. If he had been two or three years older, experience might have warned him to take at least the precaution of copying his offering, so that it would appear in his own handwriting when he “handed it in”; but Penrod had not even glanced at it.
“I think,” Miss Spence said, “I will ask several of you to read your letters aloud before you hand them in. Clara Raypole, you may read yours.”
Penrod was bored but otherwise comfortable; he had no apprehension that he might be included in the “several,” especially as Miss Spence's beginning with Clara Raypole, a star performer, indicated that her selection of readers would be made from the conscientious and proficient division at the head of the class. He listened stoically to the beginning of the first letter, though he was conscious of a dull resentment, inspired mainly by the perfect complacency of Miss Raypole's voice.
“'Dear Cousin Sadie,'” she began smoothly, “'I thought I would write you to-day on some subject of general interest, and so I thought I would tell you about the subject of our court-house. It is a very fine building situated in the centre of the city, and a visit to the building after school hours well repays for the visit. Upon entrance we find upon our left the office of the county clerk and upon our right a number of windows affording a view of the street. And so we proceed, finding on both sides much of general interest. The building was begun in 1886 A.D. and it was through in 1887 A.D. It is four stories high and made of stone, pressed brick, wood, and tiles, with a tower, or cupola, one hundred and twenty-seven feet seven inches from the ground. Among other subjects of general interest told by the janitor, we learn that the architect of the building was a man named Flanner, and the foundations extend fifteen feet five inches under the ground.'”
Penrod was unable to fix his attention upon these statistics; he began moodily to twist a button of his jacket and to concentrate a new-born and obscure but lasting hatred upon the court-house. Miss Raypole's glib voice continued to press upon his ears; but, by keeping his eyes fixed upon the twisting button he had accomplished a kind of self-hypnosis, or mental anaesthesia, and was but dimly aware of what went on about him.
The court-house was finally exhausted by its visitor, who resumed her seat and submitted with beamish grace to praise. Then Miss Spence said, in a favourable manner:
“Georgie Bassett, you may read your letter next.”
The neat Georgie rose, nothing loath, and began: “'Dear Teacher—'”
There was a slight titter, which Miss Spence suppressed. Georgie was not at all discomfited.
“'My mother says,'” he continued, reading his manuscript, “'we should treat our teacher as a friend, and soIwill write YOU a letter.'”
This penetrated Penrod's trance, and he lifted his eyes to fix them upon the back of Georgie Bassett's head in a long and inscrutable stare. It was inscrutable, and yet if Georgie had been sensitive to thought waves, it is probable that he would have uttered a loud shriek; but he remained placidly unaware, continuing:
“'I thought I would write you about a subject of general interest, and so I will write you about the flowers. There are many kinds of flowers, spring flowers, and summer flowers, and autumn flowers, but no winter flowers. Wild flowers grow in the woods, and it is nice to hunt them in springtime, and we must remember to give some to the poor and hospitals, also. Flowers can be made to grow in flower-beds and placed in vases in houses. There are many names for flowers, butIcall them “nature's ornaments.—'”
Penrod's gaze had relaxed, drooped to his button again, and his lethargy was renewed. The outer world grew vaguer; voices seemed to drone at a distance; sluggish time passed heavily—but some of it did pass.
“Penrod!”
Miss Spence's searching eye had taken note of the bent head and the twisting button. She found it necessary to speak again.
“Penrod Schofield!”
He came languidly to life.
“Ma'am?”
“You may read your letter.”
“Yes'm.”
And he began to paw clumsily among his books, whereupon Miss Spence's glance fired with suspicion.
“Have you prepared one?” she demanded.
“Yes'm,” said Penrod dreamily.
“But you're going to find you forgot to bring it, aren't you?”
“I got it,” said Penrod, discovering the paper in his “Principles of English Composition.”
“Well, we'll listen to what you've found time to prepare,” she said, adding coldly, “for once!”
The frankest pessimism concerning Penrod permeated the whole room; even the eyes of those whose letters had not met with favour turned upon him with obvious assurance that here was every prospect of a performance that would, by comparison, lend a measure of credit to the worst preceding it. But Penrod was unaffected by the general gaze; he rose, still blinking from his lethargy, and in no true sense wholly alive.
He had one idea: to read as rapidly as possible, so as to be done with the task, and he began in a high-pitched monotone, reading with a blind mind and no sense of the significance of the words.
“'Dear friend,”' he declaimed. “'You call me beautiful, but I am not really beautiful, and there are times when I doubt if I am even pretty, though perhaps my hair is beautiful, and if it is true that my eyes are like blue stars in heaven—'”
Simultaneously he lost his breath and there burst upon him a perception of the results to which he was being committed by this calamitous reading. And also simultaneous the outbreak of the class into cachinnations of delight, severely repressed by the perplexed but indignant Miss Spence.
“Go on!” she commanded grimly, when she had restored order.
“Ma'am?” he gulped, looking wretchedly upon the rosy faces all about him.
“Go on with the description of yourself,” she said. “We'd like to hear some more about your eyes being like blue stars in heaven.”
Here many of Penrod's little comrades were forced to clasp their faces tightly in both hands; and his dismayed gaze, in refuge, sought the treacherous paper in his hand.
What it beheld there was horrible.
“Proceed!” Miss Spence said.
“'I—often think,'” he faltered, “'and a-a tree-more th-thrills my bein' when I REcall your last words to me—that last—that last—that—'”
“GO ON!”
“'That last evening in the moonlight when you—you—you—'”
“Penrod,” Miss Spence said dangerously, “you go on, and stop that stammering.”
“'You—you said you would wait for—for years to—to—to—to—”
“PENROD!”
“'To win me!'” the miserable Penrod managed to gasp. “'I should not have pre—premitted—permitted you to speak so until we have our—our parents' con-consent; but oh, how sweet it—'” He exhaled a sigh of agony, and then concluded briskly, “'Yours respectfully, Penrod Schofield.'”
But Miss Spence had at last divined something, for she knew the Schofield family.
“Bring me that letter!” she said.
And the scarlet boy passed forward between rows of mystified but immoderately uplifted children.
Miss Spence herself grew rather pink as she examined the missive, and the intensity with which she afterward extended her examination to cover the complete field of Penrod Schofield caused him to find a remote centre of interest whereon to rest his embarrassed gaze. She let him stand before her throughout a silence, equalled, perhaps, by the tenser pauses during trials for murder, and then, containing herself, she sweepingly gestured him to the pillory—a chair upon the platform, facing the school.
Here he suffered for the unusual term of an hour, with many jocular and cunning eyes constantly upon him; and, when he was released at noon, horrid shouts and shrieks pursued him every step of his homeward way. For his laughter-loving little schoolmates spared him not—neither boy nor girl.
“Yay, Penrod!” they shouted. “How's your beautiful hair?” And, “Hi, Penrod! When you goin' to get your parents' consent?” And, “Say, blue stars in heaven, how's your beautiful eyes?” And, “Say, Penrod, how's your tree-mores?” “Does your tree-mores thrill your bein', Penrod?” And many other facetious inquiries, hard to bear in public.
And when he reached the temporary shelter of his home, he experienced no relief upon finding that Margaret was out for lunch. He was as deeply embittered toward her as toward any other, and, considering her largely responsible for his misfortune, he would have welcomed an opportunity to show her what he thought of her.
How long he was “kept in” after school that afternoon is not a matter of record; but it was long. Before he finally appeared upon the street, he had composed an ample letter on a subject of general interest, namely “School Life”, under the supervision of Miss Spencer. He had also received some scorching admonitions in respect to honourable behaviour regarding other people's letters; and Margaret's had been returned to him with severe instructions to bear it straight to the original owner accompanied by full confession and apology. As a measure of insurance that these things be done, Miss Spence stated definitely her intention to hold a conversation by telephone with Margaret that evening. Altogether, the day had been unusually awful, even for Wednesday, and Penrod left the school-house with the heart of an anarchist throbbing in his hot bosom. It were more accurate, indeed, to liken him to the anarchist's characteristic weapon; for as Penrod came out to the street he was, in all inward respects, a bomb, loaded and ticking.
He walked moodily, with a visible aspect of soreness. A murmurous sound was thick about his head, wherefore it is to be surmised that he communed with his familiar, and one vehement, oft-repeated phrase beat like a tocsin of revolt upon the air: “Daw-gone 'em!”
He meant everybody—the universe.
Particularly included, evidently, was a sparrow, offensively cheerful upon a lamp-post. This self-centred little bird allowed a pebble to pass overhead and remained unconcerned, but, a moment later, feeling a jar beneath his feet, and hearing the tinkle of falling glass, he decided to leave. Similarly, and at the same instant, Penrod made the same decision, and the sparrow in flight took note of a boy likewise in flight.
The boy disappeared into the nearest alley and emerged therefrom, breathless, in the peaceful vicinity of his own home. He entered the house, clumped upstairs and down, discovered Margaret reading a book in the library, and flung the accursed letter toward her with loathing.
“You can take the old thing,” he said bitterly. “Idon't want it!”
And before she was able to reply, he was out of the room. The next moment he was out of the house.
“Daw-GONE 'em!” he said.
And then, across the street, his soured eye fell upon his true comrade and best friend leaning against a picket fence and holding desultory converse with Mabel Rorebeck, an attractive member of the Friday Afternoon Dancing Class, that hated organization of which Sam and Penrod were both members. Mabel was a shy little girl; but Penrod had a vague understanding that Sam considered her two brown pig-tails beautiful.
Howbeit, Sam had never told his love; he was, in fact, sensitive about it. This meeting with the lady was by chance, and, although it afforded exquisite moments, his heart was beating in an unaccustomed manner, and he was suffering from embarrassment, being at a loss, also, for subjects of conversation. It is, indeed, no easy matter to chat easily with a person, however lovely and beloved, who keeps her face turned the other way, maintains one foot in rapid and continuous motion through an arc seemingly perilous to her equilibrium, and confines her responses, both affirmative and negative, to “Uh-huh.”
Altogether, Sam was sufficiently nervous without any help from Penrod, and it was with pure horror that he heard his own name and Mabel's shrieked upon the ambient air with viperish insinuation.
“Sam-my and May-bul! OH, oh!”
Sam started violently. Mabel ceased to swing her foot, and both, encarnadined, looked up and down and everywhere for the invisible but well-known owner of that voice. It came again, in taunting mockery:
“Sammy's mad, and I am glad,And I know what will please him:A bottle o' wine to make him shine,And Mabel Rorebeck to squeeze him!”
“Fresh ole thing!” said Miss Rorebeck, becoming articulate. And unreasonably including Sam in her indignation, she tossed her head at him with an unmistakable effect of scorn. She began to walk away.
“Well, Mabel,” Sam said plaintively, following, “it ain't MY fault.Ididn't do anything. It's Penrod.”
“I don't care,” she began pettishly, when the viperish voice was again lifted:
“Oh, oh, oh! Who's your beau? GuessIknow: Mabel and Sammy, oh, oh, oh!Icaught you!”
Then Mabel did one of those things that eternally perplex the slower sex. She deliberately made a face, not at the tree behind which Penrod was lurking, but at the innocent and heart-wrung Sam. “You needn't come limpin' after me, Sam Williams!” she said, though Sam was approaching upon two perfectly sound legs. And then she ran away at the top of her speed.
“Run, rigger, run!” Penrod began inexcusably. But Sam cut the persecutions short at this point. Stung to fury, he charged upon the sheltering tree in the Schofields' yard.
Ordinarily, at such a juncture, Penrod would have fled, keeping his own temper and increasing the heat of his pursuer's by back-flung jeers. But this was Wednesday, and he was in no mood to run from Sam. He stepped away from the tree, awaiting the onset.
“Well, what you goin' to do so much?” he said.
Sam did not pause to proffer the desired information. “'Tcha got'ny SENSE!” was the total extent of his vocal preliminaries before flinging himself headlong upon the taunter; and the two boys went to the ground together. Embracing, they rolled, they pommelled, they hammered, they kicked. Alas, this was a fight.
They rose, flailing a while, then renewed their embrace, and, grunting, bestowed themselves anew upon our ever too receptive Mother Earth. Once more upon their feet, they beset each other sorely, dealing many great blows, ofttimes upon the air, but with sufficient frequency upon resentful flesh. Tears were jolted to the rims of eyes, but technically they did not weep. “Got'ny sense,” was repeated chokingly many, many times; also, “Dern ole fool!” and, “I'll SHOW you!”
The peacemaker who appeared upon the animated scene was Penrod's great-uncle Slocum. This elderly relative had come to call upon Mrs. Schofield, and he was well upon his way to the front door when the mutterings of war among some shrubberies near the fence caused him to deflect his course in benevolent agitation.
“Boys! Boys! Shame, boys!” he said; but, as the originality of these expressions did not prove striking enough to attract any great attention from the combatants, he felt obliged to assume a share in the proceedings. It was a share entailing greater activity than he had anticipated, and, before he managed to separate the former friends, he intercepted bodily an amount of violence to which he was wholly unaccustomed. Additionally, his attire was disarranged; his hat was no longer upon his head, and his temper was in a bad way. In fact, as his hat flew off, he made use of words that under less extreme circumstances would have caused both boys to feel a much profounder interest than they did in great-uncle Slocum.
“I'll GET you!” Sam babbled. “Don't you ever dare to speak to me again, Penrod Schofield, long as you live, or I'll whip you worse'n I have this time!”
Penrod squawked. For the moment he was incapable of coherent speech, and then, failing in a convulsive attempt to reach his enemy, his fury culminated upon an innocent object that had never done him the slightest harm. Great-uncle Slocum's hat lay upon the ground close by, and Penrod was in the state of irritation that seeks an outlet too blindly—as people say, he “HAD to do SOMETHING!” He kicked great-uncle Slocum's hat with such sweep and precision that it rose swiftly, and, breasting the autumn breeze, passed over the fence and out into the street.
Great-uncle Slocum uttered a scream of anguish, and, immediately ceasing to peacemake, ran forth to a more important rescue; but the conflict was not renewed. Sanity had returned to Sam Williams; he was awed by this colossal deed of Penrod's and filled with horror at the thaught that he might be held as accessory to it. Fleetly he fled, pursued as far as the gate by the whole body of Penrod, and thereafter by Penrod's voice alone.
“You BETTER run! You wait till I catch you! You'll see what you get next time! Don't you ever speak to me again as long as you—”
Here he paused abruptly, for great-uncle Slocum had recovered his hat and was returning toward the gate. After one glance at great-uncle Slocum, Penrod did not linger to attempt any explanation—there are times when even a boy can see that apologies would seem out of place. Penrod ran round the house to the backyard.
Here he was enthusiastically greeted by Duke. “You get away from me!” Penrod said hoarsely, and with terrible gestures he repulsed the faithful animal, who retired philosophically to the stable, while his master let himself out of the back gate. Penrod had decided to absent himself from home for the time being.
The sky was gray, and there were hints of coming dusk in the air; it was an hour suited to his turbulent soul, and he walked with a sombre swagger. “Ran like a c'ardy-calf!” he sniffed, half aloud, alluding to the haste of Sam Williams in departure. “All he is, ole c'ardy-calf!”
Then, as he proceeded up the alley, a hated cry smote his ears: “Hi, Penrod! How's your tree-mores?” And two jovial schoolboy faces appeared above a high board fence. “How's your beautiful hair, Penrod?” they vociferated. “When you goin' to git your parents' consent? What makes you think you're only pretty, ole blue stars?”
Penrod looked about feverishly for a missile, and could find none to his hand, but the surface of the alley sufficed; he made mud balls and fiercely bombarded the vociferous fence. Naturally, hostile mud balls presently issued from behind this barricade; and thus a campaign developed that offered a picture not unlike a cartoonist's sketch of a political campaign, wherein this same material is used for the decoration of opponents. But Penrod had been unwise; he was outnumbered, and the hostile forces held the advantageous side of the fence.
Mud balls can be hard as well as soggy; some of those that reached Penrod were of no inconsiderable weight and substance, and they made him grunt despite himself. Finally, one, at close range, struck him in the pit of the stomach, whereupon he clasped himself about the middle silently, and executed some steps in seeming imitation of a quaint Indian dance.
His plight being observed through a knothole, his enemies climbed upon the fence and regarded him seriously.
“Aw, YOU'RE all right, ain't you, old tree-mores?” inquired one.
“I'll SHOW you!” bellowed Penrod, recovering his breath; and he hurled a fat ball—thoughtfully retained in hand throughout his agony—to such effect that his interrogator disappeared backward from the fence without having taken any initiative of his own in the matter. His comrade impulsively joined him upon the ground, and the battle continued.
Through the gathering dusk it went on. It waged but the hotter as darkness made aim more difficult—and still Penrod would not be driven from the field. Panting, grunting, hoarse from returning insults, fighting on and on, an indistinguishable figure in the gloom, he held the back alley against all comers.
For such a combat darkness has one great advantage; but it has an equally important disadvantage—the combatant cannot see to aim; on the other hand, he cannot see to dodge. And all the while Penrod was receiving two for one. He became heavy with mud. Plastered, impressionistic and sculpturesque, there was about him a quality of the tragic, of the magnificent. He resembled a sombre masterpiece by Rodin. No one could have been quite sure what he was meant for.
Dinner bells tinkled in houses. Then they were rung from kitchen doors. Calling voices came urging from the distance, calling boys' names into the darkness. They called and a note of irritation seemed to mar their beauty.
Then bells were rung again—and the voices renewed appeals more urgent, much more irritated. They called and called and called.
THUD! went the mud balls.
Thud! Thud! Blunk!
“OOF!” said Penrod.
... Sam Williams, having dined with his family at their usual hour, seven, slipped unostentatiously out of the kitchen door, as soon as he could, after the conclusion of the meal, and quietly betook himself to the Schofields' corner.
Here he stationed himself where he could see all avenues of approach to the house, and waited. Twenty minutes went by, and then Sam became suddenly alert and attentive, for the arc-light revealed a small, grotesque figure slowly approaching along the sidewalk. It was brown in colour, shaggy and indefinite in form; it limped excessively, and paused to rub itself, and to meditate.
Peculiar as the thing was, Sam had no doubt as to its identity. He advanced.
“'Lo, Penrod,” he said cautiously, and with a shade of formality.
Penrod leaned against the fence, and, lifting one leg, tested the knee-joint by swinging his foot back and forth, a process evidently provocative of a little pain. Then he rubbed the left side of his encrusted face, and, opening his mouth to its whole capacity as an aperture, moved his lower jaw slightly from side to side, thus triumphantly settling a question in his own mind as to whether or no a suspected dislocation had taken place.
Having satisfied himself on these points, he examined both shins delicately by the sense of touch, and carefully tested the capacities of his neck-muscles to move his head in a wonted manner. Then he responded somewhat gruffly: “'Lo!” “Where you been?” Sam said eagerly, his formality vanishing.
“Havin' a mud-fight.”
“I guess you did!” Sam exclaimed, in a low voice. “What you goin' to tell your—”
“Oh, nothin'.”
“Your sister telephoned to our house to see if I knew where you were,” said Sam. “She told me if I saw you before you got home to tell you sumpthing; but not to say anything about it. She said Miss Spence had telephoned to her, but she said for me to tell you it was all right about that letter, and she wasn't goin' to tell your mother and father on you, so you needn't say anything about it to 'em.”
“All right,” said Penrod indifferently.
“She says you're goin' to be in enough trouble without that,” Sam went on. “You're goin' to catch fits about your Uncle Slocum's hat, Penrod.”
“Well, I guess I know it.”
“And about not comin' home to dinner, too. Your mother telephoned twice to Mamma while we were eatin' to see if you'd come in our house. And when they SEE you—MY, but you're goin' to get the DICKENS, Penrod!”
Penrod seemed unimpressed, though he was well aware that Sam's prophecy was no unreasonable one.
“Well, I guess I know it,” he repeated casually. And he moved slowly toward his own gate.
His friend looked after him curiously—then, as the limping figure fumbled clumsily with bruised fingers at the latch of the gate, there sounded a little solicitude in Sam's voice.
“Say, Penrod, how—how do you feel?”
“What?”
“Do you feel pretty bad?”
“No,” said Penrod, and, in spite of what awaited him beyond the lighted portals just ahead, he spoke the truth. His nerves were rested, and his soul was at peace. His Wednesday madness was over.
“No,” said Penrod; “I feel bully!”
Although the pressure had thus been relieved and Penrod found peace with himself, nevertheless there were times during the rest of that week when he felt a strong distaste for Margaret. His schoolmates frequently reminded him of such phrases in her letter as they seemed least able to forget, and for hours after each of these experiences he was unable to comport himself with human courtesy when constrained (as at dinner) to remain for any length of time in the same room with her. But by Sunday these moods had seemed to pass; he attended church in her close company, and had no thought of the troubles brought upon him by her correspondence with a person who throughout remained unknown to him.
Penrod slumped far down in the pew with his knees against the back of that in front, and he also languished to one side, so that the people sitting behind were afforded a view of him consisting of a little hair and one bored ear. The sermon—a noble one, searching and eloquent—was but a persistent sound in that ear, though, now and then, Penrod's attention would be caught by some detached portion of a sentence, when his mind would dwell dully upon the phrases for a little while and lapse into a torpor. At intervals his mother, without turning her head, would whisper, “Sit up, Penrod,” causing him to sigh profoundly and move his shoulders about an inch, this mere gesture of compliance exhausting all the energy that remained to him.
The black backs and gray heads of the elderly men in the congregation oppressed him; they made him lethargic with a sense of long lives of repellent dullness. But he should have been grateful to the lady with the artificial cherries upon her hat. His gaze lingered there, wandered away, and hopelessly returned again and again, to be a little refreshed by the glossy scarlet of the cluster of tiny globes. He was not so fortunate as to be drowsy; that would have brought him some relief—and yet, after a while, his eyes became slightly glazed; he saw dimly, and what he saw was distorted.
The church had been built in the early 'Seventies, and it contained some naive stained glass of that period. The arch at the top of a window facing Penrod was filled with a gigantic Eye. Of oyster-white and raw blues and reds, inflamed by the pouring sun, it had held an awful place in the infantile life of Penrod Schofield, for in his tenderer years he accepted it without question as the literal Eye of Deity. He had been informed that the church was the divine dwelling—and there was the Eye!
Nowadays, being no longer a little child, he had somehow come to know better without being told, and, though the great flaming Eye was no longer the terrifying thing it had been to him during his childhood, it nevertheless retained something of its ominous character. It made him feel spied upon, and its awful glare still pursued him, sometimes, as he was falling asleep at night. When he faced the window his feeling was one of dull resentment.
His own glazed eyes, becoming slightly crossed with an ennui that was peculiarly intense this morning, rendered the Eye more monstrous than it was. It expanded to horrible size, growing mountainous; it turned into a volcano in the tropics, and yet it stared at him, indubitably an Eye implacably hostile to all rights of privacy forever. Penrod blinked and clinched his eyelids to be rid of this dual image, and he managed to shake off the volcano. Then, lowering the angle of his glance, he saw something most remarkable—and curiously out of place.
An inverted white soup-plate was lying miraculously balanced upon the back of a pew a little distance in front of him, and upon the upturned bottom of the soup-plate was a brown cocoanut. Mildly surprised, Penrod yawned, and, in the effort to straighten his eyes, came to life temporarily. The cocoanut was revealed as Georgie Bassett's head, and the soup-plate as Georgie's white collar. Georgie was sitting up straight, as he always did in church, and Penrod found this vertical rectitude unpleasant. He knew that he had more to fear from the Eye than Georgie had, and he was under the impression (a correct one) that Georgie felt on intimate terms with it and was actually fond of it.
Penrod himself would have maintained that he was fond of it, if he had been asked. He would have said so because he feared to say otherwise; and the truth is that he never consciously looked at the Eye disrespectfully. He would have been alarmed if he thought the Eye had any way of finding out how he really felt about it. When not off his guard, he always looked at it placatively.
By and by, he sagged so far to the left that he had symptoms of a “stitch in the side”, and, rousing himself, sat partially straight for several moments. Then he rubbed his shoulders slowly from side to side against the back of the seat, until his mother whispered, “Don't do that, Penrod.”
Upon this, he allowed himself to slump inwardly till the curve in the back of his neck rested against the curved top of the back of the seat. It was a congenial fit, and Penrod again began to move slowly from side to side, finding the friction soothing. Even so slight a pleasure was denied him by a husky, “Stop that!” from his father.
Penrod sighed, and slid farther down. He scratched his head, his left knee, his right biceps and his left ankle, after which he scratched his right knee, his right ankle and his left biceps. Then he said, “Oh, hum!” unconsciously, but so loudly that there was a reproving stir in the neighbourhood of the Schofield pew, and his father looked at him angrily.
Finally, his nose began to trouble him. It itched, and after scratching it, he rubbed it harshly. Another “Stop that!” from his father proved of no avail, being greeted by a desperate-sounding whisper, “I GOT to!”
And, continuing to rub his nose with his right hand, Penrod began to search his pockets with his left. The quest proving fruitless, he rubbed his nose with his left hand and searched with his right. Then he abandoned his nose and searched feverishly with both hands, going through all of his pockets several times.
“What DO you want?” whispered his mother.
But Margaret had divined his need, and she passed him her own handkerchief. This was both thoughtful and thoughtless—the latter because Margaret was in the habit of thinking that she became faint in crowds, especially at the theatre or in church, and she had just soaked her handkerchief with spirits of ammonia from a small phial she carried in her muff.
Penrod hastily applied the handkerchief to his nose and even more hastily exploded. He sneezed stupendously; he choked, sneezed again, wept, passed into a light convulsion of coughing and sneezing together—a mergence of sound that attracted much attention—and, after a few recurrent spasms, convalesced into a condition marked by silent tears and only sporadic instances of sneezing.
By this time his family were unanimously scarlet—his father and mother with mortification, and Margaret with the effort to control the almost irresistible mirth that the struggles and vociferations of Penrod had inspired within her. And yet her heart misgave her, for his bloodshot and tearful eyes were fixed upon her from the first and remained upon her, even when half-blinded with his agony; and their expression—as terrible as that of the windowed Eye confronting her—was not for an instant to be misunderstood. Absolutely, he believed that she had handed him the ammonia-soaked handkerchief deliberately and with malice, and well she knew that no power on earth could now or at any time henceforth persuade him otherwise.
“Of course I didn't mean it, Penrod,” she said, at the first opportunity upon their homeward way. “I didn't notice—that is, I didn't think—” Unfortunately for the effect of sincerity she hoped to produce, her voice became tremulous and her shoulders moved suspiciously.
“Just you wait! You'll see!” he prophesied, in a voice now choking, not with ammonia, but with emotion. “Poison a person, and then laugh in his face!”
He spake no more until they had reached their own house, though she made some further futile efforts at explanation and apology.
And after brooding abysmally throughout the meal that followed, he disappeared from the sight of his family, having answered with one frightful look his mother's timid suggestion that it was almost time for Sunday-school. He retired to his eyry—the sawdust box in the empty stable—and there gave rein to his embittered imaginings, incidentally forming many plans for Margaret.
Most of these were much too elaborate; but one was so alluring that he dwelt upon it, working out the details with gloomy pleasure, even after he had perceived its defects. It involved some postponement—in fact, until Margaret should have become the mother of a boy about Penrod's present age. This boy would be precisely like Georgie Bassett—Penrod conceived that as inevitable—and, like Georgie, he would be his mother's idol. Penrod meant to take him to church and force him to blow his nose with an ammonia-soaked handkerchief in the presence of the Eye and all the congregation.
Then Penrod intended to say to this boy, after church, “Well, that's exackly what your mother did to me, and if you don't like it, you better look out!”
And the real Penrod in the sawdust box clenched his fists. “Come ahead, then!” he muttered. “You talk too much!” Whereupon, the Penrod of his dream gave Margaret's puny son a contemptuous thrashing under the eyes of his mother, who besought in vain for mercy. This plan was finally dropped, not because of any lingering nepotism within Penrod, but because his injury called for action less belated.
One after another, he thought of impossible things; one after another, he thought of things merely inane and futile, for he was trying to do something beyond his power. Penrod was never brilliant, or even successful, save by inspiration.
At four o'clock he came into the house, still nebulous, and as he passed the open door of the library he heard a man's voice, not his father's.
“To me,” said this voice, “the finest lines in all literature are those in Tennyson's 'Maud'—
“'Had it lain for a century dead, My dust would hear her and beat, And blossom in purple and red, There somewhere around near her feet.'
“I think I have quoted correctly,” continued the voice nervously, “but, at any rate, what I wished to—ah—say was that I often think of those ah—words; but I never think of them without thinking of—of—of YOU. I—ah—”
The nervous voice paused, and Penrod took an oblique survey of the room, himself unobserved. Margaret was seated in an easy chair and her face was turned away from Penrod, so that her expression of the moment remained unknown to him. Facing her, and leaning toward her with perceptible emotion, was Mr. Claude Blakely—a young man with whom Penrod had no acquaintance, though he had seen him, was aware of his identity, and had heard speech between Mrs. Schofield and Margaret which indicated that Mr. Blakely had formed the habit of calling frequently at the house. This was a brilliantly handsome young man; indeed, his face was so beautiful that even Penrod was able to perceive something about it which might be explicably pleasing—at least to women. And Penrod remembered that, on the last evening before Mr. Robert Williams's departure for college, Margaret had been peevish because Penrod had genially spent the greater portion of the evening with Robert and herself upon the porch. Margaret made it clear, later, that she strongly preferred to conduct her conversations with friends unassisted—and as Penrod listened to the faltering words of Mr. Claude Blakely, he felt instinctively that, in a certain contingency, Margaret's indignation would be even more severe to-day than on the former occasion.
Mr. Blakely coughed faintly and was able to continue.
“I mean to say that when I say that what Tennyson says—ah—seems to—to apply to—to a feeling about you—”
At this point, finding too little breath in himself to proceed, in spite of the fact that he had spoken in an almost inaudible tone, Mr. Blakely stopped again.
Something about this little scene was making a deep impression upon Penrod. What that impression was, he could not possibly have stated; but he had a sense of the imminence of a tender crisis, and he perceived that the piquancy of affairs in the library had reached a point which would brand an intentional interruption as the act of a cold-blooded ruffian. Suddenly it was as though a strong light shone upon him: he decided that it was Mr. Blakely who had told Margaret that her eyes were like blue stars in heaven—THIS was the person who had caused the hateful letter to be written! That decided Penrod; his inspiration, so long waited for, had come.
“I—I feel that perhaps I am not plain,” said Mr. Blakely, and immediately became red, whereas he had been pale. He was at least modest enough about his looks to fear that Margaret might think he had referred to them. “I mean, not plain in another sense—that is, I mean not thatIam not plain in saying what I mean to you—I mean, what you mean to ME! I feel—”
This was the moment selected by Penrod. He walked carelessly into the library, inquiring in a loud, bluff voice:
“Has anybody seen my dog around here anywheres?”
Mr. Blakely had inclined himself so far toward Margaret, and he was sitting so near the edge of the chair, that only a really wonderful bit of instinctive gymnastics landed him upon his feet instead of upon his back. As for Margaret, she said, “Good gracious!” and regarded Penrod blankly.
“Well,” said Penrod breezily, “I guess it's no use lookin' for him—he isn't anywheres around. I guess I'll sit down.” Herewith, he sank into an easy chair, and remarked, as in comfortable explanation, “I'm kind of tired standin' up, anyway.”
Even in this crisis, Margaret was a credit to her mother's training.
“Penrod, have you met Mr. Blakely?”
“What?”
Margaret primly performed the rite.
“Mr. Blakely, this is my little brother Penrod.”
Mr. Blakely was understood to murmur, “How d'ye do?”
“I'm well,” said Penrod.
Margaret bent a perplexed gaze upon him, and he saw that she had not divined his intentions, though the expression of Mr. Blakely was already beginning to be a little compensation for the ammonia outrage. Then, as the protracted silence which followed the introduction began to be a severe strain upon all parties, Penrod felt called upon to relieve it.
“I didn't have anything much to do this afternoon, anyway,” he said. And at that there leaped a spark in Margaret's eye; her expression became severe.
“You should have gone to Sunday-school,” she told him crisply.
“Well, I didn't!” said Penrod, with a bitterness so significant of sufferings connected with religion, ammonia, and herself, that Margaret, after giving him a thoughtful look, concluded not to urge the point.
Mr. Blakely smiled pleasantly. “I was looking out of the window a minute ago,” he said, “and I saw a dog run across the street and turn the corner.”
“What kind of a lookin' dog was it?” Penrod inquired, with languor.
“Well,” said Mr. Blakely, “it was a—it was a nice-looking dog.”
“What colour was he?”
“He was—ah—white. That is, I think—”
“It wasn't Duke,” said Penrod. “Duke's kind of brownish-gray-like.”
Mr. Blakely brightened.
“Yes, that was it,” he said. “This dog I saw first had another dog with him—a brownish-gray dog.”
“Little or big?” Penrod asked, without interest.
“Why, Duke's a little dog!” Margaret intervened. “Of COURSE, if it was little, it must have been Duke.”
“It WAS little,” said Mr. Blakely too enthusiastically. “It was a little bit of a dog. I noticed it because it was so little.”
“Couldn't 'a' been Duke, then,” said Penrod. “Duke's a kind of a middle-sized dog.” He yawned, and added: “I don't want him now. I want to stay in the house this afternoon, anyway. And it's better for Duke to be out in the fresh air.”
Mr. Blakely coughed again and sat down, finding little to say. It was evident, also, that Margaret shared his perplexity; and another silence became so embarrassing that Penrod broke it.
“I was out in the sawdust-box,” he said, “but it got kind of chilly.” Neither of his auditors felt called upon to offer any comment, and presently he added, “I thought I better come in here where it's warmer.”
“It's too warm,”' said Margaret, at once. “Mr. Blakely, would you mind opening a window?”
“By all means!” the young man responded earnestly, as he rose. “Maybe I'd better open two?”
“Yes,” said Margaret; “that would be much better.”
But Penrod watched Mr. Blakely open two windows to their widest, and betrayed no anxiety. His remarks upon the relative temperatures of the sawdust-box and the library had been made merely for the sake of creating sound in a silent place. When the windows had been open for several minutes, Penrod's placidity, though gloomy, denoted anything but discomfort from the draft, which was powerful, the day being windy.
It was Mr. Blakely's turn to break a silence, and he did it so unexpectedly that Margaret started. He sneezed.
“Perhaps—” Margaret began, but paused apprehensively. “Perhaps-per-per—” Her apprehensions became more and more poignant; her eyes seemed fixed upon some incredible disaster; she appeared to inflate while the catastrophe she foresaw became more and more imminent. All at once she collapsed, but the power decorum had over her was attested by the mildness of her sneeze after so threatening a prelude.
“Perhaps I'd better put one of the windows down,” Mr. Blakely suggested.
“Both, I believe,” said Margaret. “The room has cooled off, now, I think.”
Mr. Blakely closed the windows, and, returning to a chair near Margaret, did his share in the production of another long period of quiet. Penrod allowed this one to pass without any vocal disturbance on his part. It may be, however, that his gaze was disturbing to Mr. Blakely, upon whose person it was glassily fixed with a self-forgetfulness that was almost morbid.
“Didn't you enjoy the last meeting of the Cotillion Club?” Margaret said finally.
And upon Mr. Blakely's answering absently in the affirmative, she suddenly began to be talkative. He seemed to catch a meaning in her fluency, and followed her lead, a conversation ensuing which at first had all the outward signs of eagerness. They talked with warm interest of people and events unknown to Penrod; they laughed enthusiastically about things beyond his ken; they appeared to have arranged a perfect way to enjoy themselves, no matter whether he was with them or elsewhere but presently their briskness began to slacken; the appearance of interest became perfunctory. Within ten minutes the few last scattering semblances of gayety had passed, and they lapsed into the longest and most profound of all their silences indoors that day. Its effect upon Penrod was to make him yawn and settle himself in his chair.
Then Mr. Blakely, coming to the surface out of deep inward communings, snapped his finger against the palm of his hand impulsively.
“By George!” he exclaimed, under his breath.
“What is it?” Margaret asked. “Did you remember something?”
“No, it's nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. But, by the way, it seems a pity for you to be missing the fine weather. I wonder if I could persuade you to take a little walk?”
Margaret, somewhat to the surprise of both the gentlemen present, looked uncertain.
“I don't know,” she said.
Mr. Blakely saw that she missed his point.
“One can talk better in the open, don't you think?” he urged, with a significant glance toward Penrod.
Margaret also glanced keenly at Penrod. “Well, perhaps.” And then, “I'll get my hat,” she said.
Penrod was on his feet before she left the room. He stretched himself.
“I'll get mine, too,” he said.
But he carefully went to find it in a direction different from that taken by his sister, and he joined her and her escort not till they were at the front door, whither Mr. Blakely—with a last flickering of hope had urged a flight in haste.
“I been thinkin' of takin' a walk, all afternoon,” said Penrod pompously. “Don't matter to me which way we go.”
The exquisite oval of Mr. Claude Blakely's face merged into outlines more rugged than usual; the conformation of his jaw became perceptible, and it could be seen that he had conceived an idea which was crystallizing into a determination.
“I believe it happens that this is our first walk together,” he said to Margaret, as they reached the pavement, “but, from the kind of tennis you play, I judge that you could go a pretty good gait. Do you like walking fast?”
She nodded. “For exercise.”
“Shall we try it then?”
“You set the pace,” said Margaret. “I think I can keep up.”
He took her at her word, and the amazing briskness of their start seemed a little sinister to Penrod, though he was convinced that he could do anything that Margaret could do, and also that neither she nor her comely friend could sustain such a speed for long. On the contrary, they actually increased it with each fleeting block they covered.
“Here!” he panted, when they had thus put something more than a half-mile behind them. “There isn't anybody has to have a doctor, I guess! What's the use our walkin' so fast?”
In truth, Penrod was not walking, for his shorter legs permitted no actual walking at such a speed; his gait was a half-trot.
“Oh, WE'RE out for a WALK!” Mr. Blakely returned, a note of gayety beginning to sound in his voice. “Marg—ah—Miss Schofield, keep your head up and breathe through your nose. That's it! You'll find I was right in suggesting this. It's going to turn out gloriously! Now, let's make it a little faster.”
Margaret murmured inarticulately, for she would not waste her breath in a more coherent reply. Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were brimming with the wind, but when she looked at Penrod, they were brimming with something more. Gurgling sounds came from her.
Penrod's expression had become grim. He offered no second protest, mainly because he, likewise, would not waste his breath, and if he would, he could not. Of breath in the ordinary sense breath, breathed automatically—he had none. He had only gasps to feed his straining lungs, and his half-trot, which had long since become a trot, was changed for a lope when Mr. Blakely reached his own best burst of speed.
And now people stared at the flying three. The gait of Margaret and Mr. Blakely could be called a walk only by courtesy, while Penrod's was becoming a kind of blind scamper. At times he zigzagged; other times, he fell behind, wabbling. Anon, with elbows flopping and his face sculptured like an antique mask, he would actually forge ahead, and then carom from one to the other of his companions as he fell back again.
Thus the trio sped through the coming of autumn dusk, outflying the fallen leaves that tumbled upon the wind. And still Penrod held to the task that he had set himself. The street lamps flickered into life, but on and on Claude Blakely led the lady, and on and on reeled the grim Penrod. Never once was he so far from them that they could have exchanged a word unchaperoned by his throbbing ear.
“OH!” Margaret cried, and, halting suddenly, she draped herself about a lamp-post like a strip of bunting. “Guh-uh-guh-GOODNESS!” she sobbed.
Penrod immediately drooped to the curb-stone, which he reached, by pure fortune, in a sitting position. Mr. Blakely leaned against a fence, and said nothing, though his breathing was eloquent. “We—we must go—go home,” Margaret gasped. “We must, if—if we can drag ourselves!”
Then Penrod showed them what mettle they he'd tried to crack. A paroxysm of coughing shook him; he spoke through it sobbingly:
“'Drag!' 'S jus' lul-like a girl! Ha-why I walk—OOF!—faster'n that every day—on my—way to school.” He managed to subjugate a tendency to nausea. “What you—want to go—home for?” he said. “Le's go on!”
In the darkness Mr. Claude Blakely's expression could not be seen, nor was his voice heard. For these and other reasons, his opinions and sentiments may not be stated.
... Mrs. Schofield was looking rather anxiously forth from her front door when the two adult figures and the faithful smaller one came up the walk.
“I was getting uneasy,” she said. “Papa and I came in and found the house empty. It's after seven. Oh, Mr. Blakely, is that you?”
“Good-evening,” he said. “I fear I must be keeping an engagement. Good-night. Good-night, Miss Schofield.”
“Good-night.”
“Well, good-night,” Penrod called, staring after him. But Mr. Blakely was already too far away to hear him, and a moment later Penrod followed his mother and sister into the house.
“I let Della go to church,” Mrs. Schofield said to Margaret. “You and I might help Katie get supper.”
“Not for a few minutes,” Margaret returned gravely, looking at Penrod. “Come upstairs, mamma; I want to tell you something.”
Penrod cackled hoarse triumph and defiance.
“Go on! Tell! What'Icare? You try to poison a person in church again, and then laugh in his face, you'll see what you get!”
But after his mother had retired with Margaret to the latter's room, he began to feel disturbed in spite of his firm belief that his cause was wholly that of justice victorious. Margaret had insidious ways of stating a case; and her point of view, no matter how absurd or unjust, was almost always adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Schofield in cases of controversy.
Penrod became uneasy. Perceiving himself to be in danger, he decided that certain measures were warranted. Unquestionably, it would be well to know beforehand in what terms Margaret would couch the charges which he supposed he must face in open court—that is to say, at the supper-table. He stole softly up the stairs, and, flattening himself against the wall, approached Margaret's door, which was about an inch ajar.
He heard his mother making sounds which appalled him—he took them for sobs. And then Margaret's voice rang out in a peal of insane laughter. Trembling, he crept nearer the door. Within the room Margaret was clinging to her mother, and both were trying to control their hilarity.
“He did it all to get even!” Margaret exclaimed, wiping her eyes. “He came in at just the right time. That GOOSE was beginning to talk his silly, soft talk—the way he does with every girl in town—and he was almost proposing, and I didn't know how to stop him. And then Penrod came in and did it for me. I could have hugged Penrod, mamma, I actually could! And I saw he meant to stay to get even for that ammonia—and, oh, I worked so hard to make him think I wanted him to GO! Mamma, mamma, if you could have SEEN that walk! That GOOSE kept thinking he could wear Penrod out or drop him behind, but I knew he couldn't so long as Penrod believed he was worrying us and getting even. And that GOOSE thought I WANTED to get rid of Penrod, too; and the conceited thing said it would turn out 'gloriously,' meaning we'd be alone together pretty soon—I'd like to shake him! You see, I pretended so well, in order to make Penrod stick to us, that GOOSE believed I meant it! And if he hadn't tried to walk Penrod off his legs, he wouldn't have wilted his own collar and worn himself out, and I think he'd have hung on until you'd have had to invite him to stay to supper, and he'd have stayed on all evening, and I wouldn't have had a chance to write to Robert Williams. Mamma, there have been lots of times when I haven't been thankful for Penrod, but to-day I could have got down on my knees to you and papa for giving me such a brother!”
In the darkness of the hall, as a small but crushed and broken form stole away from the crack in the door, a gigantic Eye seemed to form—seemed to glare down upon Penrod—warning him that the way of vengeance is the way of bafflement, and that genius may not prevail against the trickeries of women.