iams skeptically.

Penrod changed his tone and became persuasive.

"Looky here, Sam," he said confidentially. "I've got 'a mighty nice
partner, but my mother don't like her mother; and so I've been thinking
I better not dance with her. I'll tell you what I'll do; I've got a
mighty good sling in the house, and I'll give it to you if you'll change
partners."

"You want to change and you don't even know who mine is!" said Sam, and
he made the simple though precocious deduction: "Yours must be a lala!
Well, I invited Mabel Rorebeck, and she wouldn't let me change if
I wanted to. Mabel Rorebeck'd rather dance with me," he continued
serenely, "than anybody; and she said she was awful afraid you'd ast
her. But I ain't goin' to dance with Mabel after all, because this
morning she sent me a note about her uncle died last night--and P'fessor
Bartet'll have to find me a partner after I get there. Anyway I bet you
haven't got any sling--and I bet your partner's Baby Rennsdale!"

"What if she is?" said Penrod. "She's good enough for ME!" This speech
held not so much modesty in solution as intended praise of the lady.
Taken literally, however, it was an understatement of the facts and
wholly insincere.

"Yay!" jeered Mr. Williams, upon whom his friend's hypocrisy was quite
wasted. "How can your mother not like her mother? Baby Rennsdale hasn't
got any mother! You and her'll be a sight!"

That was Penrod's own conviction; and with this corroboration of it
he grew so spiritless that he could offer no retort. He slid to a
despondent sitting posture upon the door sill and gazed wretchedly upon
the ground, while his companion went to replenish the licorice water at
the hydrant--enfeebling the potency of the liquor no doubt, but making
up for that in quantity.

"Your mother goin' with you to the cotillon?" asked Sam when he
returned.

"No. She's goin' to meet me there. She's goin' somewhere first."

"So's mine," said Sam. "I'll come by for you."

"All right."

"I better go before long. Noon whistles been blowin'."

"All right," Penrod repeated dully.

Sam turned to go, but paused. A new straw hat was peregrinating along
the fence near the two boys. This hat belonged to someone passing upon
the sidewalk of the cross-street; and the someone was Maurice Levy.
Even as they stared, he halted and regarded them over the fence with two
small, dark eyes.

Fate had brought about this moment and this confrontation.

CHAPTER XI