ws him, too?"

"Of course, men are different," Mrs. Schofield returned, apologetically.
"But a mother knows----"

"Penrod," said Aunt Sarah, solemnly, "does your father understand you?"

"Ma'am?"

"About as much as he'd understand Sitting Bull!" she laughed.

"And I'll tell you what your mother thinks you are, Penrod. Her real
belief is that you're a novice in a convent."

"Ma'am?"

"Aunt Sarah!"

"I know she thinks that, because whenever you don't behave like a novice
she's disappointed in you. And your father really believes that you're
a decorous, well-trained young business man, and whenever you don't
live up to that standard you get on his nerves and he thinks you need a
walloping. I'm sure a day very seldom passes without their both saying
they don't know what on earth to do with you. Does whipping do you any
good, Penrod?"

"Ma'am?"

"Go on and finish the lemonade; there's about glassful left. Oh, take
it, take it; and don't say why! Of COURSE you're a little pig."

Penrod laughed gratefully, his eyes fixed upon her over the rim of his
uptilted glass.

"Fill yourself up uncomfortably," said the old lady. "You're twelve
years old, and you ought to be happy--if you aren't anything else. It's
taken over nineteen hundred years of Christianity and some hundreds of
thousands of years of other things to produce you, and there you sit!"

"Ma'am?"

"It'll be your turn to struggle and muss things up, for the betterment
of posterity, soon enough," said Aunt Sarah Crim. "Drink your lemonade!"

CHAPTER XXIX FANCHON

"Aunt Sarah's a funny old lady," Penrod observed, on the way back to the
town. "What's she want me to give papa this old sling for? Last thing
she said was to be sure not to forget to give it to him. HE don't want
it; and she said, herself, it ain't any good. She's older than you or
papa, isn't she?"

"About fifty years older," answered Mrs. Schofield, turning upon him a
stare of perplexity. "Don't cut into the leather with your new knife,
dear; the livery man might ask us to pay if----No. I wouldn't scrape
the paint off, either--nor whittle your shoe with it. COULDN'T you put
it up until we get home?"

"We goin' straight home?"

"No. We're going to stop at Mrs. Gelbraith's and ask a strange little
girl to come to your party, this afternoon."

"Who?"

"Her name is Fanchon. She's Mrs. Gelbraith's little niece."

"What makes her so queer?"

"I didn't say she's queer."

"You said--