“No, you couldn’t.”
“Well, there must be some boy up there
that I could——”
“No, they ain’t! You better——”
“I expect not, then,” said Penrod, quickly.
“You better ‘expect not.’
Didn’t I tell you once you’d never get
back alive if you ever tried to come up around the
Third? You want me to show you how we do
up there, ’bo?”
He began a slow and deadly advance, whereupon Penrod
timidly offered a diversion:
“Say, Rupe, I got a box of rats in our stable
under a glass cover, so you can watch ’em jump
around when you hammer on the box. Come on and
look at ’em.”
“All right,” said the fat-faced boy, slightly
mollified. “We’ll let Dan kill ’em.”
“No, sir! I’m goin’ to
keep ’em. They’re kind of pets; I’ve
had ’em all summer—I got names for
em, and——”
“Looky here, ’bo. Did you hear me
say we’ll let ’Dan kill ’em?”
“Yes, but I won’t——”
“What won’t you?” Rupe became
sinister immediately. “It seems to me you’re
gettin’ pretty fresh around here.”
“Well, I don’t want——”
Mr. Collins once more brought into play the dreadful
eye-to-eye scowl as practised “up at the Third,”
and, sometimes, also by young leading men upon the
stage. Frowning appallingly, and thrusting forward
his underlip, he placed his nose almost in contact
with the nose of Penrod, whose eyes naturally became
crossed.
“Dan kills the rats. See?” hissed
the fat-faced boy, maintaining the horrible juxtaposition.
“Well, all right,” said Penrod, swallowing.
“I don’t want ’em much.”
And when the pose had been relaxed, he stared at his
new friend for a moment, almost with reverence.
Then he brightened.
“Come on, Rupe!” he cried enthusiastically,
as he climbed the fence. “We’ll give
our dogs a little live meat—’bo!”
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.
