her arms
toward him, cried with love and admiration:

"Oh, PENrod!"

He negligently kicked a globe from the high chandelier, and, smiling
coldly, floated out through the hall to the front steps of the school,
while Marjorie followed, imploring him to grant her one kind look.

In the street an enormous crowd had gathered, headed by Miss Spence and
a brass band; and a cheer from a hundred thousand throats shook the
very ground as Penrod swam overhead. Marjorie knelt upon the steps
and watched adoringly while Penrod took the drum-major's baton and,
performing sinuous evolutions above the crowd, led the band. Then he
threw the baton so high that it disappeared from sight; but he went
swiftly after it, a double delight, for he had not only the delicious
sensation of rocketing safely up and up into the blue sky, but also
that of standing in the crowd below, watching and admiring himself as he
dwindled to a speck, disappeared and then, emerging from a cloud, came
speeding down, with the baton in his hand, to the level of the treetops,
where he beat time for the band and the vast throng and Marjorie Jones,
who all united in the "Star-spangled Banner" in honour of his aerial
achievements. It was a great moment.

It was a great moment, but something seemed to threaten it. The face
of Miss Spence looking up from the crowd grew too vivid--unpleasantly
vivid. She was beckoning him and shouting, "Come down, Penrod Schofield!
Penrod Schofield, come down here!"

He could hear her above the band and the singing of the multitude; she
seemed intent on spoiling everything. Marjorie Jones was weeping to
show how sorry she was that she had formerly slighted him, and throwing
kisses to prove that she loved him; but Miss Spence kept jumping between
him and Marjorie, incessantly calling his name.

He grew more and more irritated with her; he was the most important
person in the world and was engaged in proving it to Marjorie Jones and
the whole city, and yet Miss Spence seemed to feel she still had the
right to order him about as she did in the old days when he was an
ordinary schoolboy. He was furious; he was sure she wanted him to do
something disagreeable. It seemed to him that she had screamed "Penrod
Schofield!" thousands of times.

From the beginning of his aerial experiments in his own schoolroom, he
had not opened his lips, knowing somehow that one of the requirements
for air floating is perfect silence on the part of the floate