"Carrie dances ROTTEN!" Again it was the work of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; but the plot was attributed to another.

"SHAME, Penrod Schofield!" said both the aunts Rennsdale publicly, and
Penrod, wholly innocent, became scarlet with indignant mortification.
Carlie Chitten himself, however, marked the true offenders. A slight
flush tinted his cheeks, and then, in his quiet, self-contained way, he
slipped through the crowd of girls and boys, unnoticed, into the
hall, and ran noiselessly up the stairs and into the "gentlemen's
dressing-room", now inhabited only by hats, caps, overcoats, and the
temporarily discarded shoes of the dancers. Most of the shoes stood in
rows against the wall, and Carlie examined these rows attentively, after
a time discovering a pair of shoes with patent leather tips. He knew
them; they belonged to Maurice Levy, and, picking them up, he went to
a corner of the room where four shoes had been left together under
a chair. Upon the chair were overcoats and caps that he was able to
identify as the property of Penrod Schofield and Samuel Williams; but,
as he was not sure which pair of shoes belonged to Penrod and which
to Sam, he added both pairs to Maurice's and carried them into the
bathroom. Here he set the plug in the tub, turned the faucets, and,
after looking about him and discovering large supplies of all sorts in a
wall cabinet, he tossed six cakes of green soap into the tub. He let
the soap remain in the water to soften a little, and, returning to the
dressing room, whiled away the time in mixing and mismating pairs of
shoes along the walls, and also in tying the strings of the mismated
shoes together in hard knots.

Throughout all this, his expression was grave and intent; his bright
eyes grew brighter, but he did not smile. Carlie Chitten was a singular
boy, though not unique: he was an "only child", lived at a hotel, and
found life there favourable to the development of certain peculiarities
in his nature. He played a lone hand, and with what precocious diplomacy
he played that curious hand was attested by the fact that Carlie was
brilliantly esteemed by parents and guardians in general.

It must be said for Carlie that, in one way, his nature was liberal.
For instance, having come upstairs to prepare a vengeance upon Sam and
Maurice in return for their slurs upon his dancing, he did not confine
his efforts to the belongings of those two alone. He provided every boy
in the house with