Penrod sat morosely upon the back fence and gazed
with envy at Duke, his wistful dog.
A bitter soul dominated the various curved and angular
surfaces known by a careless world as the face of
Penrod Schofield. Except in solitude, that face
was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod
had come into his twelfth year wearing an expression
carefully trained to be inscrutable. Since the
world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere defensive
instinct prompted him to give it as little as possible
to lay hold upon. Nothing is more impenetrable
than the face of a boy who has learned this, and Penrod’s
was habitually as fathomless as the depth of his hatred
this morning for the literary activities of Mrs. Lora
Rewbush—an almost universally respected
fellow citizen, a lady of charitable and poetic inclinations,
and one of his own mother’s most intimate friends.
Mrs. Lora Rewbush had written something which she
called “The Children’s Pageant of the
Table Round,” and it was to be performed in public
that very afternoon at the Women’s Arts and
Guild Hall for the benefit of the Coloured Infants’
Betterment Society. And if any flavour of sweetness
remained in the nature of Penrod Schofield after the
dismal trials of the school-week just past, that problematic,
infinitesimal remnant was made pungent acid by the
imminence of his destiny to form a prominent feature
of the spectacle, and to declaim the loathsome sentiments
of a character named upon the programme the Child
Sir Lancelot.
After each rehearsal he had plotted escape, and only
ten days earlier there had been a glimmer of light:
Mrs. Lora Rewbush caught a very bad cold, and it was
hoped it might develop into pneumonia; but she recovered
so quickly that not even a rehearsal of the Children’s
Pageant was postponed. Darkness closed in.
Penrod had rather vaguely debated plans for a self-mutilation
such as would make his appearance as the Child Sir
Lancelot inexpedient on public grounds; it was a heroic
and attractive thought, but the results of some extremely
sketchy preliminary experiments caused him to abandon
it.
There was no escape; and at last his hour was hard
upon him. Therefore he brooded on the fence and
gazed with envy at his wistful Duke.
The dog’s name was undescriptive of his person,
which was obviously the result of a singular series
of mesalliances. He wore a grizzled moustache
and indefinite whiskers; he was small and shabby, and
looked like an old postman. Penrod envied Duke
because he was sure Duke would never be compelled
to be a Child Sir Lancelot. He thought a dog free
and unshackled to go or come as the wind listeth.
Penrod forgot the life he led Duke.
There was a long soliloquy upon the fence, a plaintive
monologue without words: the boy’s thoughts
were adjectives, but they were expressed by a running
film of pictures in his mind’s eye, morbidly
prophetic of the hideosities before him. Finally
he spoke aloud, with such spleen that Duke rose from
his haunches and lifted one ear in keen anxiety.
