Fortunately, Maurice was still at Atlantic City—and
now the convalescent’s heart leaped. In
the distance he saw Marjorie coming—in
pink again, with a ravishing little parasol over her
head. And alone! No Mitchy-Mitch was to
mar this meeting.
Penrod increased the feebleness of his steps, now
and then leaning upon the fence as if for support.
“How do you do, Marjorie?” he said, in
his best sick-room voice, as she came near.
To his pained amazement, she proceeded on her way,
her nose at a celebrated elevation—an icy
nose.
She cut him dead.
He threw his invalid’s airs to the winds, and
hastened after her.
“Marjorie,” he pleaded, “what’s
the matter? Are you mad? Honest, that day
you said to come back next morning, and you’d
be on the corner, I was sick. Honest, I was awful
sick, Marjorie! I had to have the doctor——”
“Doctor!” She whirled upon him, her
lovely eyes blazing.
“I guess we’ve had to have the doctor
enough at our house, thanks to you, Mister Penrod
Schofield. Papa says you haven’t got near
sense enough to come in out of the rain, after what
you did to poor little Mitchy-Mitch——”
“What?”
“Yes, and he’s sick in bed yet!”
Marjorie went on, with unabated fury. “And
papa says if he ever catches you in this part of town——”
“What’d I do to Mitchy-Mitch?”
gasped Penrod.
“You know well enough what you did to Mitchy-Mitch!”
she cried. “You gave him that great, big,
nasty two-cent piece!”
“Well, what of it?”
“Mitchy-Mitch swallowed it!”
“What!”
“And papa says if he ever just lays eyes on
you, once, in this neighbourhood——”
But Penrod had started for home.
In his embittered heart there was increasing a critical
disapproval of the Creator’s methods. When
He made pretty girls, thought Penrod, why couldn’t
He have left out their little brothers!
For several days after this, Penrod thought of growing
up to be a monk, and engaged in good works so far
as to carry some kittens (that otherwise would have
been drowned) and a pair of Margaret’s outworn
dancing-slippers to a poor, ungrateful old man sojourning
in a shed up the alley. And although Mr. Robert
Williams, after a very short interval, began to leave
his guitar on the front porch again, exactly as if
he thought nothing had happened, Penrod, with his younger
vision of a father’s mood, remained coldly distant
from the Jones neighbourhood. With his own family
his manner was gentle, proud and sad, but not for
long enough to frighten them. The change came
with mystifying abruptness at the end of the week.
It was Duke who brought it about.
Duke could chase a much bigger dog out of the Schofields’
yard and far down the street. This might be thought
to indicate unusual valour on the part of Duke and
cowardice on that of the bigger dogs whom he undoubtedly
put to rout. On the contrary, all such flights
were founded in mere superstition, for dogs are even
more superstitious than boys and coloured people;
and the most firmly established of all dog superstitions
is that any dog—be he the smallest and feeblest
in the world—can whip any trespasser whatsoever.
