.
"Remember, we are all little knights and ladies to-day. Little knights
and ladies of the Table Round would not make so much noise. Now
children, we must begin to take our places on the stage. Is everybody
here?"

Penrod made his escape under cover of this diversion: he slid behind
Mrs. Lora Rewbush, and being near a door, opened it unnoticed and went
out quickly, closing it behind him. He found himself in a narrow and
vacant hallway which led to a door marked "Janitor's Room."

Burning with outrage, heart-sick at the sweet, cold-blooded laughter
of Marjorie Jones, Penrod rested his elbows upon a window-sill and
speculated upon the effects of a leap from the second story. One of the
reasons he gave it up was his desire to live on Maurice Levy's account:
already he was forming educational plans for the Child Sir Galahad.

A stout man in blue overalls passed through the hallway muttering to
himself petulantly. "I reckon they'll find that hall hot enough NOW!" he
said, conveying to Penrod an impression that some too feminine women had
sent him upon an unreasonable errand to the furnace. He went into the
Janitor's Room and, emerging a moment later, minus the overalls, passed
Penrod again with a bass rumble--"Dern 'em!" it seemed he said--and
made a gloomy exit by the door at the upper end of the hallway.

The conglomerate and delicate rustle of a large, mannerly audience was
heard as the janitor opened and closed the door; and stage-fright
seized the boy. The orchestra began an overture, and, at that, Penrod,
trembling violently, tiptoed down the hall into the Janitor's Room. It
was a cul-de-sac: There was no outlet save by the way he had come.

Despairingly he doffed his mantle and looked down upon himself for
a last sickening assurance that the stockings were as obviously and
disgracefully Margaret's as they had seemed in the mirror at home. For a
moment he was encouraged: perhaps he was no worse than some of the
other boys. Then he noticed that a safety-pin had opened; one of those
connecting the stockings with his trunks. He sat down to fasten it
and his eye fell for the first time with particular attention upon the
trunks. Until this instant he had been preoccupied with the stockings.

Slowly recognition dawned in his eyes.

The Schofields' house stood on a corner at the intersection of two
main-travelled streets; the fence was low, and the publicity obtained by
the washable portion of the family apparel, on Mo