t them BEE-cause----"

"PENROD!" Miss Schofield stamped again.

"You DID say you'd missed me," said Mr. Robert Williams, seizing
hurriedly upon the silence. "Didn't you say----"

A livelier tune rose upward.

"Oh, you talk about your fascinating beauties,
Of your dem-O-zells, your belles,
But the littil dame I met, while in the city,
She's par excellaws the queen of all the swells.
She's sweeter far----"

Margaret rose and jumped up and down repeatedly in a well-calculated
area, whereupon the voice of Penrod cried chokedly, "QUIT that!" and
there were subterranean coughings and sneezings.

"You want to choke a person to death?" he inquired severely, appearing
at the end of the porch, a cobweb upon his brow. And, continuing, he
put into practice a newly acquired phrase, "You better learn to be more
considerick of other people's comfort."

Slowly and grievedly he withdrew, passed to the sunny side of the house,
reclined in the warm grass beside his wistful Duke, and presently sang
again.

"She's sweeter far than the flower I named her after,
And the memery of her smile it haunts me YET!
When in after years the moon is soffly beamun'
And at eve I smell the smell of mignonette
I will re-CALL that----"

"Pen-ROD!"

Mr. Schofield appeared at an open window upstairs, a book in his hand.

"Stop it!" he commanded. "Can't I stay home with a headache ONE morning
from the office without having to listen to--I never DID hear such
squawking!" He retired from the window, having too impulsively called
upon his Maker. Penrod, shocked and injured, entered the house, but
presently his voice was again audible as far as the front porch. He was
holding converse with his mother, somewhere in the interior.

"Well, what of it? Sam Williams told me his mother said if Bob ever did
think of getting married to Margaret, his mother said she'd like to know
what in the name o' goodness they expect to----"

Bang! Margaret thought it better to close the front door.

The next minute Penrod opened it. "I suppose you want the whole family
to get a sunstroke," he said reprovingly. "Keepin' every breath of air
out o' the house on a day like this!"

And he sat down implacably in the doorway.

The serious poetry of all languages has omitted the little brother;
and yet he is one of the great trials of love--the immemorial burden of
courtship. Tragedy should have found place for him, but he