throughout the meal that followed, he
disappeared from the sight of his family, having answered with one
frightful look his mother's timid suggestion that it was almost time
for Sunday-school. He retired to his eyry--the sawdust box in the empty
stable--and there gave rein to his embittered imaginings, incidentally
forming many plans for Margaret.

Most of these were much too elaborate; but one was so alluring that he
dwelt upon it, working out the details with gloomy pleasure, even after
he had perceived its defects. It involved some postponement--in fact,
until Margaret should have become the mother of a boy about Penrod's
present age. This boy would be precisely like Georgie Bassett--Penrod
conceived that as inevitable--and, like Georgie, he would be his
mother's idol. Penrod meant to take him to church and force him to blow
his nose with an ammonia-soaked handkerchief in the presence of the Eye
and all the congregation.

Then Penrod intended to say to this boy, after church, "Well, that's
exackly what your mother did to me, and if you don't like it, you better
look out!"

And the real Penrod in the sawdust box clenched his fists. "Come ahead,
then!" he muttered. "You talk too much!" Whereupon, the Penrod of his
dream gave Margaret's puny son a contemptuous thrashing under the eyes
of his mother, who besought in vain for mercy. This plan was finally
dropped, not because of any lingering nepotism within Penrod, but
because his injury called for action less belated.

One after another, he thought of impossible things; one after another,
he thought of things merely inane and futile, for he was trying to
do something beyond his power. Penrod was never brilliant, or even
successful, save by inspiration.

At four o'clock he came into the house, still nebulous, and as he passed
the open door of the library he heard a man's voice, not his father's.

"To me," said this voice, "the finest lines in all literature are those
in Tennyson's 'Maud'--

"'Had it lain for a century dead, My dust would hear her and beat, And
blossom in purple and red, There somewhere around near her feet.'

"I think I have quoted correctly," continued the voice nervously, "but,
at any rate, what I wished to--ah--say was that I often think of those
ah--words; but I never think of them without thinking of--of--of YOU.
I--ah--"

The nervous voice paused, and Penrod took an oblique survey of the room,
himself unobserved. Margaret was seated in an