"Every word!"

Penrod again resumed attention to his soup. His mother looked at him
curiously, and then, struck by a sudden thought, gathered the glances of
the adults of the table by a significant movement of the head, and, by
another, conveyed an admonition to drop the subject until later. Miss
Spence was Penrod's teacher: it was better, for many reasons, not
to discuss the subject of her queerness before him. This was Mrs.
Schofield's thought at the time. Later she had another, and it kept her
awake.

The next afternoon, Mr. Schofield, returning at five o'clock from the
cares of the day, found the house deserted, and sat down to read his
evening paper in what appeared to be an uninhabited apartment known to
its own world as the "drawing-room." A sneeze, unexpected both to him
and the owner, informed him of the presence of another person.

"Where are you, Penrod?" the parent asked, looking about.

"Here," said Penrod meekly.

Stooping, Mr. Schofield discovered his son squatting under the piano,
near an open window--his wistful Duke lying beside him.

"What are you doing there?"

"Me?"

"Why under the piano?"

"Well," the boy returned, with grave sweetness, "I was just kind of
sitting here--thinking."

"All right." Mr. Schofield, rather touched, returned to the digestion of
a murder, his back once more to the piano; and Penrod silently drew
from beneath his jacket (where he had slipped it simultaneously with
the sneeze) a paper-backed volume entitled: "Slimsy, the Sioux City
Squealer, or, 'Not Guilty, Your Honor.'"

In this manner the reading-club continued in peace, absorbed, contented,
the world well forgot--until a sudden, violently irritated slam-bang of
the front door startled the members; and Mrs. Schofield burst into the
room and threw herself into a chair, moaning.

"What's the matter, mamma?" asked her husband laying aside his paper.

"Henry Passloe Schofield," returned the lady, "I don't know what IS to
be done with that boy; I do NOT!"

"You mean Penrod?"

"Who else could I mean?" She sat up, exasperated, to stare at him.
"Henry Passloe Schofield, you've got to take this matter in your
hands--it's beyond me!"

"Well, what has he----"

"Last night I got to thinking," she began rapidly, "about what Clara
told us--thank Heaven she and Margaret and little Clara have gone to tea
at Cousin Charlotte's!--but they'll be home soon--about what she said
about Miss Spence----"

"You mean about