ick-room voice, as she
came near.

To his pained amazement, she proceeded on her way, her nose at a
celebrated elevation--an icy nose.

She cut him dead.

He threw his invalid's airs to the winds, and hastened after her.

"Marjorie," he pleaded, "what's the matter? Are you mad? Honest, that
day you said to come back next morning, and you'd be on the corner,
I was sick. Honest, I was AWFUL sick, Marjorie! I had to have the
doctor----"

"DOCTOR!" She whirled upon him, her lovely eyes blazing.

"I guess WE'VE had to have the doctor enough at OUR house, thanks to
you, Mister Penrod Schofield. Papa says you haven't got NEAR sense
enough to come in out of the rain, after what you did to poor little
Mitchy-Mitch----"

"What?"

"Yes, and he's sick in bed YET!" Marjorie went on, with unabated fury.
"And papa says if he ever catches you in this part of town----"

"WHAT'D I do to Mitchy-Mitch?" gasped Penrod.

"You know well enough what you did to Mitchy-Mitch!" she cried. "You
gave him that great, big, nasty two-cent piece!"

"Well, what of it?"

"Mitchy-Mitch swallowed it!"

"What!"

"And papa says if he ever just lays eyes on you, once, in this
neighbourhood----"

But Penrod had started for home.

In his embittered heart there was increasing a critical disapproval of
the Creator's methods. When He made pretty girls, thought Penrod, why
couldn't He have left out their little brothers!

CHAPTER XXI RUPE COLLINS

For several days after this, Penrod thought of growing up to be a
monk, and engaged in good works so far as to carry some kittens (that
otherwise would have been drowned) and a pair of Margaret's outworn
dancing-slippers to a poor, ungrateful old man sojourning in a shed
up the alley. And although Mr. Robert Williams, after a very short
interval, began to leave his guitar on the front porch again, exactly as
if he thought nothing had happened, Penrod, with his younger vision of
a father's mood, remained coldly distant from the Jones neighbourhood.
With his own family his manner was gentle, proud and sad, but not for
long enough to frighten them. The change came with mystifying abruptness
at the end of the week.

It was Duke who brought it about.

Duke could chase a much bigger dog out of the Schofields' yard and far
down the street. This might be thought to indicate unusual valour on
the part of Duke and cowardice on that of the bigger dogs whom he
undoubtedly put to rout. On the contrary,