privacy.

It was usually upon Wednesday that his sufferings culminated; the
nervous strength accumulated during the holiday hours at the end of the
week would carry him through Monday and Tuesday; but by Wednesday it
seemed ultimately proven that the next Saturday actually never was
coming, "this time", and the strained spirit gave way. Wednesday was the
day averaging highest in Penrod's list of absences; but the time came
when he felt that the advantages attendant upon his Wednesday "sick
headache" did not compensate for its inconveniences.

For one thing, this illness had become so symmetrically recurrent that
even the cook felt that he was pushing it too far, and the liveliness of
her expression, when he was able to leave his couch and take the air in
the backyard at about ten o'clock, became more disagreeable to him
with each convalescence. There visibly increased, too, about the whole
household, an atmosphere of uncongeniality and suspicion so pronounced
that every successive illness was necessarily more severe, and at last
the patient felt obliged to remain bedded until almost eleven, from
time to time giving forth pathetic little sounds eloquent of anguish
triumphing over Stoic endurance, yet lacking a certain conviction of
utterance.

Finally, his father enacted, and his mother applied, a new and
distinctly special bit of legislation, explaining it with simple candour
to the prospective beneficiary.

"Whenever you really ARE sick," they said, "you can go out and play as
soon as you're well--that is, if it happens on Saturday. But when you're
sick on a school-day, you'll stay in bed till the next morning. This is
going to do you good, Penrod."

Physically, their opinion appeared to be affirmed, for Wednesday after
Wednesday passed without any recurrence of the attack; but the spiritual
strain may have been damaging. And it should be added that if Penrod's
higher nature did suffer from the strain, he was not unique. For,
confirming the effect of Wednesday upon boys in general, it is probable
that, if full statistics concerning cats were available, they would
show that cats dread Wednesdays, and that their fear is shared by
other animals, and would be shared, to an extent by windows, if windows
possessed nervous systems. Nor must this probable apprehension on
the part of cats and the like be thought mere superstition. Cats have
superstitions, it is true; but certain actions inspired by the sight of
a boy with