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!
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.
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.Iwant 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 allIask '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.