artner about four
years and two feet his junior. It was hard enough for Penrod to keep
step with a girl of his size.

The foreboding vision remained with him, increasing in vividness,
throughout the forenoon. He found himself unable to fix his mind
upon anything else, and, having bent his gloomy footsteps toward the
sawdust-box, after breakfast, presently descended therefrom, abandoning
Harold Ramorez where he had left him the preceding Saturday. Then, as he
sat communing silently with wistful Duke, in the storeroom, coquettish
fortune looked his way.

It was the habit of Penrod's mother not to throw away anything
whatsoever until years of storage conclusively proved there would never
be a use for it; but a recent house-cleaning had ejected upon the back
porch a great quantity of bottles and other paraphernalia of medicine,
left over from illnesses in the family during a period of several years.
This debris Della, the cook, had collected in a large market basket,
adding to it some bottles of flavouring extracts that had proved
unpopular in the household; also, old catsup bottles; a jar or two of
preserves gone bad; various rejected dental liquids--and other things.
And she carried the basket out to the storeroom in the stable.

Penrod was at first unaware of what lay before him. Chin on palms, he
sat upon the iron rim of a former aquarium and stared morbidly through
the open door at the checkered departing back of Della. It was another
who saw treasure in the basket she had left.

Mr. Samuel Williams, aged eleven, and congenial to Penrod in years,
sex, and disposition, appeared in the doorway, shaking into foam a black
liquid within a pint bottle, stoppered by a thumb.

"Yay, Penrod!" the visitor gave greeting.

"Yay," said Penrod with slight enthusiasm. "What you got?"

"Lickrish water."

"Drinkin's!" demanded Penrod promptly. This is equivalent to the cry of
"Biters" when an apple is shown, and establishes unquestionable title.

"Down to there!" stipulated Sam, removing his thumb to affix it firmly
as a mark upon the side of the bottle a check upon gormandizing that
remained carefully in place while Penrod drank.

This rite concluded, the visitor's eye fell upon the basket deposited by
Della. He emitted tokens of pleasure.

"Looky! Looky! Looky there! That ain't any good pile o' stuff--oh, no!"

"What for?"

"Drug store!" shouted Sam. "We'll be partners----"

"Or else," Penrod suggested, "I'll run the