“Well, what are you doing?”
“Just coming down,” he replied, in a grieved
but patient tone.
“Then why don’t you come?”
“I got Duke here. I got to get him down,
haven’t I? You don’t suppose I want
to leave a poor dog in here to starve, do you?”
“Well, hand him down over the side to me.
Let me——”
“I’ll get him down all right,” said
Penrod. “I got him up here, and I guess
I can get him down!”
“Well then, do it!”
“I will if you’ll let me alone. If
you’ll go on back to the house I promise to
be there inside of two minutes. Honest!”
He put extreme urgency into this, and his mother turned
toward the house. “If you’re not
there in two minutes——”
“I will be!”
After her departure, Penrod expended some finalities
of eloquence upon Duke, then disgustedly gathered
him up in his arms, dumped him into the basket and,
shouting sternly, “All in for the ground floor—step
back there, madam—all ready, Jim!”
lowered dog and basket to the floor of the storeroom.
Duke sprang out in tumultuous relief, and bestowed
frantic affection upon his master as the latter slid
down from the box.
Penrod dusted himself sketchily, experiencing a sense
of satisfaction, dulled by the overhanging afternoon,
perhaps, but perceptible: he had the feeling
of one who has been true to a cause. The operation
of the elevator was unsinful and, save for the shock
to Duke’s nervous system, it was harmless; but
Penrod could not possibly have brought himself to
exhibit it in the presence of his mother or any other
grown person in the world. The reasons for secrecy
were undefined; at least, Penrod did not define them.
After lunch his mother and his sister Margaret, a
pretty girl of nineteen, dressed him for the sacrifice.
They stood him near his mother’s bedroom window
and did what they would to him.
During the earlier anguishes of the process he was
mute, exceeding the pathos of the stricken calf in
the shambles; but a student of eyes might have perceived
in his soul the premonitory symptoms of a sinister
uprising. At a rehearsal (in citizens’ clothes)
attended by mothers and grown-up sisters, Mrs. Lora
Rewbush had announced that she wished the costuming
to be “as medieval and artistic as possible.”
Otherwise, and as to details, she said, she would
leave the costumes entirely to the good taste of the
children’s parents. Mrs. Schofield and Margaret
were no archeologists, but they knew that their taste
was as good as that of other mothers and sisters concerned;
so with perfect confidence they had planned and executed
a costume for Penrod; and the only misgiving they
felt was connected with the tractability of the Child
Sir Lancelot himself.
Stripped to his underwear, he had been made to wash
himself vehemently; then they began by shrouding his
legs in a pair of silk stockings, once blue but now
mostly whitish. Upon Penrod they visibly surpassed
mere ampleness; but they were long, and it required
only a rather loose imagination to assume that they
were tights.
