her was bitterer to endure than from any other.
"Don't you call me that again!"

"Why not, LITTLE GENTLEMAN?"

He stamped his foot. "You better stop!"

Marjorie sent into his furious face her lovely, spiteful laughter.

"Little gentleman, little gentleman, little gentleman!" she said
deliberately. "How's the little gentleman, this afternoon? Hello, little
gentleman!"

Penrod, quite beside himself, danced eccentrically. "Dry up!" he howled.
"Dry up, dry up, dry up, dry UP!"

Mitchy-Mitch shouted with delight and applied a finger to the side
of the caldron--a finger immediately snatched away and wiped upon a
handkerchief by his fastidious sister.

"'Ittle gellamun!" said Mitchy-Mitch.

"You better look out!" Penrod whirled upon this small offender with
grim satisfaction. Here was at least something male that could without
dishonour be held responsible. "You say that again, and I'll give you
the worst----"

"You will NOT!" snapped Marjorie, instantly vitriolic. "He'll say just
whatever he wants to, and he'll say it just as MUCH as he wants to. Say
it again, Mitchy-Mitch!"

"'Ittle gellamun!" said Mitchy-Mitch promptly.

"Ow-YAH!" Penrod's tone-production was becoming affected by his mental
condition. "You say that again, and I'll----"

"Go on, Mitchy-Mitch," cried Marjorie. "He can't do a thing. He don't
DARE! Say it some more, Mitchy-Mitch--say it a whole lot!"

Mitchy-Mitch, his small, fat face shining with confidence in his
immunity, complied.

"'Ittle gellamun!" he squeaked malevolently. "'Ittle gellamun! 'Ittle
gellamun! 'Ittle gellamun!"

The desperate Penrod bent over the whitewashed rock, lifted it, and
then--outdoing Porthos, John Ridd, and Ursus in one miraculous burst of
strength--heaved it into the air.

Marjorie screamed.

But it was too late. The big stone descended into the precise midst of
the caldron and Penrod got his mighty splash. It was far, far beyond his
expectations.

Spontaneously there were grand and awful effects--volcanic spectacles of
nightmare and eruption. A black sheet of eccentric shape rose out of the
caldron and descended upon the three children, who had no time to evade
it.

After it fell, Mitchy-Mitch, who stood nearest the caldron, was the
thickest, though there was enough for all. Br'er Rabbit would have fled
from any of them.

CHAPTER XXV TAR

When Marjorie and Mitchy-Mitch got their breath, they used it vocally;
and seldom have more penetrating sou