



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger





PENROD


By Booth Tarkington



To

John, Donald And Booth Jameson

From A Grateful Uncle




CONTENTS

     I.      A Boy and His Dog
     II.     Romance
     III.    The Costume
     IV.     Desperation
     V.      The Pageant of the Table Round
     VI.     Evening
     VII.    Evils of Drink
     VIII.   School
     IX.     Soaring
     X.      Uncle John
     XI.     Fidelity of a Little Dog
     XII.    Miss Rennsdale Accepts
     XIII.   The Smallpox Medicine
     XIV.    Maurice Levy's Constitution
     XV.     The Two Families
     XVI.    The New Star
     XVII.   Retiring from the Show-Business
     XVIII.  Music
     XIX.    The Inner Boy
     XX.     Brothers of Angels
     XXI.    Rupe Collins
     XXII.   The Imitator
     XXIII.  <DW52> Troops in Action
     XXIV.   "Little Gentleman"
     XXV.    Tar
     XXVI.   The Quiet Afternoon
     XXVII.  Conclusion of the Quiet Afternoon
     XXVIII. Twelve
     XXIX.   Fanchon
     XXX.    The Birthday Party
     XXXI.   Over the Fence




CHAPTER I A BOY AND HIS DOG

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
 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.

     "'I hight Sir Lancelot du Lake, the Child,
     Gentul-hearted, meek, and mild.
     What though I'm BUT a littul child,
     Gentul-hearted, meek, and----'  OOF!"

All of this except "oof" was a quotation from the Child Sir Lancelot, as
conceived by Mrs. Lora Rewbush. Choking upon it, Penrod slid down from
the fence, and with slow and thoughtful steps entered a one-storied wing
of the stable, consisting of a single apartment, floored with cement and
used as a storeroom for broken bric-a-brac, old paint-buckets, decayed
garden-hose, worn-out carpets, dead furniture, and other condemned odds
and ends not yet considered hopeless enough to be given away.

In one corner stood a large box, a part of the building itself: it was
eight feet high and open at the top, and it had been constructed as a
sawdust magazine from which was drawn material for the horse's bed in
a stall on the other side of the partition. The big box, so high and
towerlike, so commodious, so suggestive, had ceased to fulfil its
legitimate function; though, providentially, it had been at least half
full of sawdust when the horse died. Two years had gone by since that
passing; an interregnum in transportation during which Penrod's father
was "thinking" (he explained sometimes) of an automobile. Meanwhile, the
gifted and generous sawdust-box had served brilliantly in war and peace:
it was Penrod's stronghold.

There was a partially defaced sign upon the front wall of the box; the
donjon-keep had known mercantile impulses:

     The O. K. RaBiT Co.
     PENROD ScHoFiELD AND CO.
     iNQuiRE FOR PRicEs

This was a venture of the preceding vacation, and had netted, at one
time, an accrued and owed profit of $1.38. Prospects had been brightest
on the very eve of cataclysm. The storeroom was locked and guarded, but
twenty-seven rabbits and Belgian hares, old and young, had perished here
on a single night--through no human agency, but in a foray of cats, the
besiegers treacherously tunnelling up through the sawdust from the small
aperture which opened into the stall beyond the partition. Commerce has
its martyrs.

Penrod climbed upon a barrel, stood on tiptoe, grasped the rim of the
box; then, using a knot-hole as a stirrup, threw one leg over the top,
drew himself up, and dropped within. Standing upon the packed sawdust,
he was just tall enough to see over the top.

Duke had not followed him into the storeroom, but remained near the open
doorway in a concave and pessimistic attitude. Penrod felt in a dark
corner of the box and laid hands upon a simple apparatus consisting of
an old bushel-basket with a few yards of clothes-line tied to each of
its handles. He passed the ends of the lines over a big spool, which
revolved upon an axle of wire suspended from a beam overhead, and, with
the aid of this improvised pulley, lowered the empty basket until it
came to rest in an upright position upon the floor of the storeroom at
the foot of the sawdust-box.

"Eleva-ter!" shouted Penrod. "Ting-ting!"

Duke, old and intelligently apprehensive, approached slowly, in a
semicircular manner, deprecatingly, but with courtesy. He pawed the
basket delicately; then, as if that were all his master had expected of
him, uttered one bright bark, sat down, and looked up triumphantly. His
hypocrisy was shallow: many a horrible quarter of an hour had taught him
his duty in this matter.

"El-e-VAY-ter!" shouted Penrod sternly. "You want me to come down there
to you?"

Duke looked suddenly haggard. He pawed the basket feebly again and,
upon another outburst from on high, prostrated himself flat. Again
threatened, he gave a superb impersonation of a worm.

"You get in that el-e-VAY-ter!"

Reckless with despair, Duke jumped into the basket, landing in a
dishevelled posture, which he did not alter until he had been drawn
up and poured out upon the floor of sawdust with the box. There,
shuddering, he lay in doughnut shape and presently slumbered.

It was dark in the box, a condition that might have been remedied by
sliding back a small wooden panel on runners, which would have let in
ample light from the alley; but Penrod Schofield had more interesting
means of illumination. He knelt, and from a former soap-box, in a
corner, took a lantern, without a chimney, and a large oil-can, the leak
in the latter being so nearly imperceptible that its banishment
from household use had seemed to Penrod as inexplicable as it was
providential.

He shook the lantern near his ear: nothing splashed; there was no sound
but a dry clinking. But there was plenty of kerosene in the can; and he
filled the lantern, striking a match to illumine the operation. Then he
lit the lantern and hung it upon a nail against the wall. The sawdust
floor was slightly impregnated with oil, and the open flame quivered in
suggestive proximity to the side of the box; however, some rather deep
charrings of the plank against which the lantern hung offered evidence
that the arrangement was by no means a new one, and indicated at least a
possibility of no fatality occurring this time.

Next, Penrod turned up the surface of the sawdust in another corner
of the floor, and drew forth a cigar-box in which were half a
dozen cigarettes, made of hayseed and thick brown wrapping paper, a
lead-pencil, an eraser, and a small note-book, the cover of which was
labelled in his own handwriting:

"English Grammar. Penrod Schofield. Room 6, Ward School Nomber Seventh."

The first page of this book was purely academic; but the study of
English undefiled terminated with a slight jar at the top of the second:
"Nor must an adverb be used to modif----"

Immediately followed:

     "HARoLD RAMoREZ THE RoADAGENT
     OR WiLD LiFE AMoNG THE
     ROCKY MTS."

And the subsequent entries in the book appeared to have little concern
with Room 6, Ward School Nomber Seventh.



CHAPTER II ROMANCE

The author of "Harold Ramorez," etc., lit one of the hayseed cigarettes,
seated himself comfortably, with his back against the wall and his
right shoulder just under the lantern, elevated his knees to support the
note-book, turned to a blank page, and wrote, slowly and earnestly:

"CHAPITER THE SIXTH"


He took a knife from his pocket, and, broodingly, his eyes upon the
inward embryos of vision, sharpened his pencil. After that, he extended
a foot and meditatively rubbed Duke's back with the side of his shoe.
Creation, with Penrod, did not leap, full-armed, from the brain; but
finally he began to produce. He wrote very slowly at first, and then
with increasing rapidity; faster and faster, gathering momentum and
growing more and more fevered as he sped, till at last the true fire
came, without which no lamp of real literature may be made to burn.


Mr. Wilson reched for his gun but our hero had him covred and soon said
Well I guess you don't come any of that on me my freind.

Well what makes you so sure about it sneered the other bitting his lip
so savageley that the blood ran. You are nothing but a common Roadagent
any way and I do not propose to be bafled by such, Ramorez laughed at
this and kep Mr. Wilson covred by his ottomatick.

Soon the two men were struggling together in the death-roes but soon Mr
Wilson got him bound and gaged his mouth and went away for awhile leavin
our hero, it was dark and he writhd at his bonds writhing on the floor
wile the rats came out of their holes and bit him and vernim got all
over him from the floor of that helish spot but soon he managed to push
the gag out of his mouth with the end of his toungeu and got all his
bonds off.

Soon Mr Wilson came back to tant him with his helpless condition flowed
by his gang of detectives and they said Oh look at Ramorez sneering at
his plight and tanted him with his helpless condition because Ramorez
had put the bonds back sos he would look the same but could throw them
off him when he wanted to Just look at him now sneered they. To hear him
talk you would thought he was hot stuff and they said Look at him now,
him that was going to do so much, Oh I would not like to be in his fix.

Soon Harold got mad at this and jumped up with blasing eyes throwin off
his bonds like they were air Ha Ha sneered he I guess you better not
talk so much next time. Soon there flowed another awful struggle and
siezin his ottomatick back from Mr Wilson he shot two of the detectives
through the heart Bing Bing went the ottomatick and two more went to
meet their Maker only two detectives left now and so he stabbed one and
the scondrel went to meet his Maker for now our hero was fighting
for his very life. It was dark in there now for night had falen and a
terrible view met the eye Blood was just all over everything and the
rats were eatin the dead men.

Soon our hero manged to get his back to the wall for he was fighting
for his very life now and shot Mr Wilson through the abodmen Oh said Mr
Wilson you---- ---- ---- (The dashes are Penrod's.)

Mr Wilson stagerd back vile oaths soilin his lips for he was in pain Why
you---- ----you sneered he I will get you yet---- ----you Harold Ramorez

The remainin scondrel had an ax which he came near our heros head with
but missed him and ramand stuck in the wall Our heros amunition was
exhaused what was he to do, the remanin scondrel would soon get his ax
lose so our hero sprung forward and bit him till his teeth met in the
flech for now our hero was fighting for his very life. At this the
remanin scondrel also cursed and swore vile oaths. Oh sneered he----
---- ----you Harold Ramorez what did you bite me for Yes sneered Mr
Wilson also and he has shot me in the abdomen too the----

Soon they were both cursin and reviln him together Why you---- ---- ----
---- ----sneered they what did you want to injure us for----you Harold
Ramorez you have not got any sence and you think you are so much but you
are no better than anybody else and you are a---- ---- ---- ---- ----
----

Soon our hero could stand this no longer. If you could learn to act like
gentlmen said he I would not do any more to you now and your low vile
exppresions have not got any effect on me only to injure your own self
when you go to meet your Maker Oh I guess you have had enogh for one day
and I think you have learned a lesson and will not soon atemp to beard
Harold Ramorez again so with a tantig laugh he cooly lit a cigarrete and
takin the keys of the cell from Mr Wilson poket went on out.

Soon Mr Wilson and the wonded detective manged to bind up their wonds
and got up off the floor---- ----it I will have that dasstads life now
sneered they if we have to swing for it---- ---- ---- ----him he shall
not eccape us again the low down---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Chapiter seventh

A mule train of heavily laden burros laden with gold from the mines was
to be seen wondering among the highest clifts and gorgs of the Rocky Mts
and a tall man with a long silken mustash and a cartigde belt could be
heard cursin vile oaths because he well knew this was the lair of Harold
Ramorez Why---- ---- ----you you---- ---- ---- ---- mules you sneered he
because the poor mules were not able to go any quicker ---- you I will
show you Why---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----it sneered he his oaths growing
viler and viler I will whip you---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----you
sos you will not be able to walk for a week---- ----you you mean old----
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----mules you

Scarcly had the vile words left his lips when----


"PENROD!"

It was his mother's voice, calling from the back porch.

Simultaneously, the noon whistles began to blow, far and near; and the
romancer in the sawdust-box, summoned prosaically from steep mountain
passes above the clouds, paused with stubby pencil halfway from lip to
knee. His eyes were shining: there was a rapt sweetness in his gaze. As
he wrote, his burden had grown lighter; thoughts of Mrs. Lora Rewbush
had almost left him; and in particular as he recounted (even by
the chaste dash) the annoyed expressions of Mr. Wilson, the wounded
detective, and the silken moustached mule-driver, he had felt
mysteriously relieved concerning the Child Sir Lancelot. Altogether he
looked a better and a brighter boy.

"Pen-ROD!"

The rapt look faded slowly. He sighed, but moved not.

"Penrod! We're having lunch early just on your account, so you'll have
plenty of time to be dressed for the pageant. Hurry!"

There was silence in Penrod's aerie.

"PEN-rod!"

Mrs. Schofields voice sounded nearer, indicating a threatened approach.
Penrod bestirred himself: he blew out the lantern, and shouted
plaintively:

"Well, ain't I coming fast's I can?"

"Do hurry," returned the voice, withdrawing; and the kitchen door could
be heard to close.

Languidly, Penrod proceeded to set his house in order.

Replacing his manuscript and pencil in the cigar-box, he carefully
buried the box in the sawdust, put the lantern and oil-can back in the
soap-box, adjusted the elevator for the reception of Duke, and, in no
uncertain tone, invited the devoted animal to enter.

Duke stretched himself amiably, affecting not to hear; and when this
pretence became so obvious that even a dog could keep it up no longer,
sat down in a corner, facing it, his back to his master, and his head
perpendicular, nose upward, supported by the convergence of the two
walls. This, from a dog, is the last word, the comble of the immutable.
Penrod commanded, stormed, tried gentleness; persuaded with honeyed
words and pictured rewards. Duke's eyes looked backward; otherwise
he moved not. Time elapsed. Penrod stooped to flattery, finally to
insincere caresses; then, losing patience spouted sudden threats.

Duke remained immovable, frozen fast to his great gesture of implacable
despair.

A footstep sounded on the threshold of the store-room.

"Penrod, come down from that box this instant!"

"Ma'am?"

"Are you up in that sawdust-box again?" As Mrs. Schofield had just heard
her son's voice issue from the box, and also, as she knew he was there
anyhow, her question must have been put for oratorical purposes only.
"Because if you are," she continued promptly, "I'm going to ask your
papa not to let you play there any----"

Penrod's forehead, his eyes, the tops of his ears, and most of his hair,
became visible to her at the top of the box. "I ain't 'playing!'" he
said indignantly.

"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.



CHAPTER III THE COSTUME

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.

The upper part of his body was next concealed from view by a garment
so peculiar that its description becomes difficult. In 1886, Mrs.
Schofield, then unmarried, had worn at her "coming-out party" a dress of
vivid salmon silk which had been remodelled after her marriage to accord
with various epochs of fashion until a final, unskilful campaign at a
dye-house had left it in a condition certain to attract much attention
to the wearer. Mrs. Schofield had considered giving it to Della, the
cook; but had decided not to do so, because you never could tell how
Della was going to take things, and cooks were scarce.

It may have been the word "medieval" (in Mrs. Lora Rewbush's rich
phrase) which had inspired the idea for a last conspicuous usefulness;
at all events, the bodice of that once salmon dress, somewhat modified
and moderated, now took a position, for its farewell appearance in
society, upon the back, breast, and arms of the Child Sir Lancelot.

The area thus costumed ceased at the waist, leaving a Jaeger-like and
unmedieval gap thence to the tops of the stockings. The inventive genius
of woman triumphantly bridged it, but in a manner which imposes upon
history almost insuperable delicacies of narration. Penrod's father
was an old-fashioned man: the twentieth century had failed to shake his
faith in red flannel for cold weather; and it was while Mrs. Schofield
was putting away her husband's winter underwear that she perceived how
hopelessly one of the elder specimens had dwindled; and simultaneously
she received the inspiration which resulted in a pair of trunks for the
Child Sir Lancelot, and added an earnest bit of colour, as well as a
genuine touch of the Middle Ages, to his costume. Reversed, fore to aft,
with the greater part of the legs cut off, and strips of silver braid
covering the seams, this garment, she felt, was not traceable to its
original source.

When it had been placed upon Penrod, the stockings were attached to it
by a system of safety-pins, not very perceptible at a distance. Next,
after being severely warned against stooping, Penrod got his feet into
the slippers he wore to dancing-school--"patent-leather pumps" now
decorated with large pink rosettes.

"If I can't stoop," he began, smolderingly, "I'd like to know how'm I
goin' to kneel in the pag----"

"You must MANAGE!" This, uttered through pins, was evidently thought to
be sufficient.

They fastened some ruching about his slender neck, pinned ribbons at
random all over him, and then Margaret thickly powdered his hair.

"Oh, yes, that's all right," she said, replying to a question put by her
mother. "They always powdered their hair in Colonial times."

"It doesn't seem right to me--exactly," objected Mrs. Schofield, gently.
"Sir Lancelot must have been ever so long before Colonial times."

"That doesn't matter," Margaret reassured her. "Nobody'll know the
difference--Mrs. Lora Rewbush least of all. I don't think she knows a
thing about it, though, of course, she does write splendidly and the
words of the pageant are just beautiful. Stand still, Penrod!" (The
author of "Harold Ramorez" had moved convulsively.) "Besides, powdered
hair's always becoming. Look at him. You'd hardly know it was Penrod!"

The pride and admiration with which she pronounced this undeniable truth
might have been thought tactless, but Penrod, not analytical, found his
spirits somewhat elevated. No mirror was in his range of vision and,
though he had submitted to cursory measurements of his person a week
earlier, he had no previous acquaintance with the costume. He began
to form a not unpleasing mental picture of his appearance, something
somewhere between the portraits of George Washington and a vivid memory
of Miss Julia Marlowe at a matinee of "Twelfth Night."

He was additionally cheered by a sword which had been borrowed from a
neighbor, who was a Knight of Pythias. Finally there was a mantle, an
old golf cape of Margaret's. Fluffy polka-dots of white cotton had been
sewed to it generously; also it was ornamented with a large cross of
red flannel, suggested by the picture of a Crusader in a newspaper
advertisement. The mantle was fastened to Penrod's shoulder (that is,
to the shoulder of Mrs. Schofield's ex-bodice) by means of large
safety-pins, and arranged to hang down behind him, touching his heels,
but obscuring nowise the glory of his facade. Then, at last, he was
allowed to step before a mirror.

It was a full-length glass, and the worst immediately happened. It might
have been a little less violent, perhaps, if Penrod's expectations had
not been so richly and poetically idealized; but as things were, the
revolt was volcanic.

Victor Hugo's account of the fight with the devil-fish, in "Toilers
of the Sea," encourages a belief that, had Hugo lived and increased in
power, he might have been equal to a proper recital of the half
hour which followed Penrod's first sight of himself as the Child Sir
Lancelot. But Mr. Wilson himself, dastard but eloquent foe of Harold
Ramorez, could not have expressed, with all the vile dashes at
his command, the sentiments which animated Penrod's bosom when the
instantaneous and unalterable conviction descended upon him that he was
intended by his loved ones to make a public spectacle of himself in his
sister's stockings and part of an old dress of his mother's.

To him these familiar things were not disguised at all; there seemed no
possibility that the whole world would not know them at a glance. The
stockings were worse than the bodice. He had been assured that these
could not be recognized, but, seeing them in the mirror, he was sure
that no human eye could fail at first glance to detect the difference
between himself and the former purposes of these stockings. Fold,
wrinkle, and void shrieked their history with a hundred tongues,
invoking earthquake, eclipse, and blue ruin. The frantic youth's final
submission was obtained only after a painful telephonic conversation
between himself and his father, the latter having been called up and
upon, by the exhausted Mrs. Schofield, to subjugate his offspring by
wire.

The two ladies made all possible haste, after this, to deliver
Penrod into the hands of Mrs. Lora Rewbush; nevertheless, they found
opportunity to exchange earnest congratulations upon his not having
recognized the humble but serviceable paternal garment now brilliant
about the Lancelotish middle. Altogether, they felt that the costume
was a success. Penrod looked like nothing ever remotely imagined by
Sir Thomas Malory or Alfred Tennyson;--for that matter, he looked like
nothing ever before seen on earth; but as Mrs. Schofield and Margaret
took their places in the audience at the Women's Arts and Guild Hall,
the anxiety they felt concerning Penrod's elocutionary and gesticular
powers, so soon to be put to public test, was pleasantly tempered by
their satisfaction that, owing to their efforts, his outward appearance
would be a credit to the family.



CHAPTER IV DESPERATION

The Child Sir Lancelot found himself in a large anteroom behind the
stage--a room crowded with excited children, all about equally medieval
and artistic. Penrod was less conspicuous than he thought himself, but
he was so preoccupied with his own shame, steeling his nerves to meet
the first inevitable taunting reference to his sister's stockings,
that he failed to perceive there were others present in much of his own
unmanned condition. Retiring to a corner, immediately upon his entrance,
he managed to unfasten the mantle at the shoulders, and, drawing it
round him, pinned it again at his throat so that it concealed the rest
of his costume. This permitted a temporary relief, but increased his
horror of the moment when, in pursuance of the action of the "pageant,"
the sheltering garment must be cast aside.

Some of the other child knights were also keeping their mantles close
about them. A few of the envied opulent swung brilliant fabrics
from their shoulders, airily, showing off hired splendours from a
professional costumer's stock, while one or two were insulting examples
of parental indulgence, particularly little Maurice Levy, the Child Sir
Galahad. This shrinking person went clamorously about, making it known
everywhere that the best tailor in town had been dazzled by a great
sum into constructing his costume. It consisted of blue velvet
knickerbockers, a white satin waistcoat, and a beautifully cut little
swallow-tailed coat with pearl buttons. The medieval and artistic
triumph was completed by a mantle of yellow velvet, and little white
boots, sporting gold tassels.

All this radiance paused in a brilliant career and addressed the Child
Sir Lancelot, gathering an immediately formed semicircular audience of
little girls. Woman was ever the trailer of magnificence.

"What YOU got on?" inquired Mr. Levy, after dispensing information.
"What you got on under that ole golf cape?"

Penrod looked upon him coldly. At other times his questioner would have
approached him with defer