ore,
mellow; consequently, his influence is profound. Eleven is not quite
satisfactory: it is only an approach. Eleven has the disadvantage of
six, of nineteen, of forty-four, and of sixty-nine. But, like twelve,
seven is an honourable age, and the ambition to attain it is laudable.
People look forward to being seven. Similarly, twenty is worthy, and so,
arbitrarily, is twenty-one; forty-five has great solidity; seventy is
most commendable and each year thereafter an increasing honour. Thirteen
is embarrassed by the beginnings of a new colthood; the child becomes a
youth. But twelve is the very top of boyhood.

Dressing, that morning, Penrod felt that the world was changed from the
world of yesterday. For one thing, he seemed to own more of it; this
day was HIS day. And it was a day worth owning; the midsummer sunshine,
pouring gold through his window, came from a cool sky, and a breeze
moved pleasantly in his hair as he leaned from the sill to watch the
tribe of clattering blackbirds take wing, following their leader
from the trees in the yard to the day's work in the open country. The
blackbirds were his, as the sunshine and the breeze were his, for they
all belonged to the day which was his birthday and therefore most surely
his. Pride suffused him: he was twelve!

His father and his mother and Margaret seemed to understand the
difference between to-day and yesterday. They were at the table when
he descended, and they gave him a greeting which of itself marked the
milestone. Habitually, his entrance into a room where his elders sat
brought a cloud of apprehension: they were prone to look up in pathetic
expectancy, as if their thought was, "What new awfulness is he going to
start NOW?" But this morning they laughed; his mother rose and kissed
him twelve times, so did Margaret; and his father shouted, "Well, well!
How's the MAN?"

Then his mother gave him a Bible and "The Vicar of Wakefield"; Margaret
gave him a pair of silver-mounted hair brushes; and his father gave him
a "Pocket Atlas" and a small compass.

"And now, Penrod," said his mother, after breakfast, "I'm going to
take you out in the country to pay your birthday respects to Aunt Sarah
Crim."

Aunt Sarah Crim, Penrod's great-aunt, was his oldest living relative.
She was ninety, and when Mrs. Schofield and Penrod alighted from a
carriage at her gate they found her digging with a spade in the garden.

"I'm glad you brought him," she said, desisting from