“I bet you wanted to dance with Marjorie!”
said his friend.
“Me? I wouldn’t dance with that girl
if she begged me to! I wouldn’t dance with
her to save her from drowning! I wouldn’t
da——”
“Oh, no—you wouldn’t!”
interrupted Mr. Williams skeptically.
Penrod changed his tone and became persuasive.
“Looky here, Sam,” he said confidentially.
“I’ve got ’a mighty nice partner,
but my mother don’t like her mother; and so I’ve
been thinking I better not dance with her. I’ll
tell you what I’ll do; I’ve got a mighty
good sling in the house, and I’ll give it to
you if you’ll change partners.”
“You want to change and you don’t even
know who mine is!” said Sam, and he made the
simple though precocious deduction: “Yours
must be a lala! Well, I invited Mabel Rorebeck,
and she wouldn’t let me change if I wanted to.
Mabel Rorebeck’d rather dance with me,”
he continued serenely, “than anybody; and she
said she was awful afraid you’d ast her.
But I ain’t goin’ to dance with Mabel after
all, because this morning she sent me a note about
her uncle died last night—and P’fessor
Bartet’ll have to find me a partner after I get
there. Anyway I bet you haven’t got any
sling—and I bet your partner’s Baby
Rennsdale!”
“What if she is?” said Penrod. “She’s
good enough for me!” This speech held not
so much modesty in solution as intended praise of the
lady. Taken literally, however, it was an understatement
of the facts and wholly insincere.
“Yay!” jeered Mr. Williams, upon whom
his friend’s hypocrisy was quite wasted.
“How can your mother not like her mother?
Baby Rennsdale hasn’t got any mother! You
and her’ll be a sight!”
That was Penrod’s own conviction; and with this
corroboration of it he grew so spiritless that he
could offer no retort. He slid to a despondent
sitting posture upon the door sill and gazed wretchedly
upon the ground, while his companion went to replenish
the licorice water at the hydrant—enfeebling
the potency of the liquor no doubt, but making up
for that in quantity.
“Your mother goin’ with you to the cotillon?”
asked Sam when he returned.
“No. She’s goin’ to meet me
there. She’s goin’ somewhere first.”
“So’s mine,” said Sam. “I’ll
come by for you.”
“All right.”
“I better go before long. Noon whistles
been blowin’.”
“All right,” Penrod repeated dully.
Sam turned to go, but paused. A new straw hat
was peregrinating along the fence near the two boys.
This hat belonged to someone passing upon the sidewalk
of the cross-street; and the someone was Maurice Levy.
Even as they stared, he halted and regarded them over
the fence with two small, dark eyes.
Fate had brought about this moment and this confrontation.
“Lo, Sam!” said Maurice cautiously.
“What you doin’?”
