, to
concoct at home and bring to class on Wednesday morning, "a model letter
to a friend on some subject of general interest." Penalty for omission
to perform this simple task was definite; whosoever brought no letter
would inevitably be "kept in" after school, that afternoon, until
the letter was written, and it was precisely a premonition of this
misfortune that had prompted Penrod to attempt his experimental moaning
upon his father, for, alas! he had equipped himself with no model
letter, nor any letter whatever.

In stress of this kind, a boy's creed is that anything is worth a try;
but his eye for details is poor. He sees the future too sweepingly and
too much as he would have it seldom providing against inconsistencies of
evidence that may damage him. For instance, there is a well-known
case of two brothers who exhibited to their parents, with pathetic
confidence, several imported dried herring on a string, as a proof that
the afternoon had been spent, not at a forbidden circus, but with hook
and line upon the banks of a neighbouring brook.

So with Penrod. He had vital need of a letter, and there before his
eyes, upon Margaret's desk, was apparently the precise thing he needed!

From below rose the voice of his mother urging him to the
breakfast-table, warning him that he stood in danger of tardiness at
school; he was pressed for time, and acted upon an inspiration that
failed to prompt him even to read the letter.

Hurriedly he wrote "Dear freind" at the top of the page Margaret had
partially filled. Then he signed himself "Yours respectfuly, Penrod
Schofield" at the bottom, and enclosed the missive within a battered
volume entitled, "Principles of English Composition." With that and
other books compacted by a strap, he descended to a breakfast somewhat
oppressive but undarkened by any misgivings concerning a "letter to a
friend on some subject of general interest." He felt that a difficulty
had been encountered and satisfactorily disposed of; the matter could
now be dismissed from his mind. He had plenty of other difficulties to
take its place.

No; he had no misgivings, nor was he assailed by anything unpleasant
in that line, even when the hour struck for the class in English
composition. If he had been two or three years older, experience might
have warned him to take at least the precaution of copying his offering,
so that it would appear in his own handwriting when he "handed it in";
but Penrod had n