eloquent foe of Harold
Ramorez, could not have expressed, with all the vile dashes at
his command, the sentiments which animated Penrod's bosom when the
instantaneous and unalterable conviction descended upon him that he was
intended by his loved ones to make a public spectacle of himself in his
sister's stockings and part of an old dress of his mother's.

To him these familiar things were not disguised at all; there seemed no
possibility that the whole world would not know them at a glance. The
stockings were worse than the bodice. He had been assured that these
could not be recognized, but, seeing them in the mirror, he was sure
that no human eye could fail at first glance to detect the difference
between himself and the former purposes of these stockings. Fold,
wrinkle, and void shrieked their history with a hundred tongues,
invoking earthquake, eclipse, and blue ruin. The frantic youth's final
submission was obtained only after a painful telephonic conversation
between himself and his father, the latter having been called up and
upon, by the exhausted Mrs. Schofield, to subjugate his offspring by
wire.

The two ladies made all possible haste, after this, to deliver
Penrod into the hands of Mrs. Lora Rewbush; nevertheless, they found
opportunity to exchange earnest congratulations upon his not having
recognized the humble but serviceable paternal garment now brilliant
about the Lancelotish middle. Altogether, they felt that the costume
was a success. Penrod looked like nothing ever remotely imagined by
Sir Thomas Malory or Alfred Tennyson;--for that matter, he looked like
nothing ever before seen on earth; but as Mrs. Schofield and Margaret
took their places in the audience at the Women's Arts and Guild Hall,
the anxiety they felt concerning Penrod's elocutionary and gesticular
powers, so soon to be put to public test, was pleasantly tempered by
their satisfaction that, owing to their efforts, his outward appearance
would be a credit to the family.

CHAPTER IV DESPERATION

The Child Sir Lancelot found himself in a large anteroom behind the
stage--a room crowded with excited children, all about equally medieval
and artistic. Penrod was less conspicuous than he thought himself, but
he was so preoccupied with his own shame, steeling his nerves to meet
the first inevitable taunting reference to his sister's stockings,
that he failed to perceive there were others present in much of his own
unmanned condition. Re