Next day, Penrod acquired a dime by a simple and antique process which
was without doubt sometimes practised by the boys of Babylon. When the
teacher of his class in Sunday-school requested the weekly contribution,
Penrod, fumbling honestly (at first) in the wrong pockets, managed to
look so embarrassed that the gentle lady told him not to mind, and said
she was often forgetful herself. She was so sweet about it that, looking
into the future, Penrod began to feel confident of a small but regular
income.
At the close of the afternoon services he did not go home, but proceeded
to squander the funds just withheld from China upon an orgy of the most
pungently forbidden description. In a Drug Emporium, near the church, he
purchased a five-cent sack of candy consisting for the most part of the
heavily flavoured hoofs of horned cattle, but undeniably substantial,
and so generously capable of resisting solution that the purchaser must
needs be avaricious beyond reason who did not realize his money's worth.
Equipped with this collation, Penrod contributed his remaining nickel to
a picture show, countenanced upon the seventh day by the legal but not
the moral authorities. Here, in cozy darkness, he placidly insulted his
liver with jaw-breaker upon jaw-breaker from the paper sack, and in a
surfeit of content watched the silent actors on the screen.
One film made a lasting impression upon him. It depicted with relentless
pathos the drunkard's progress; beginning with his conversion to beer
in the company of loose travelling men; pursuing him through an
inexplicable lapse into evening clothes and the society of some
remarkably painful ladies, next, exhibiting the effects of alcohol on
the victim's domestic disposition, the unfortunate man was seen in the
act of striking his wife and, subsequently, his pleading baby daughter
with an abnormally heavy walking-stick. Their flight--through the
snow--to seek the protection of a relative was shown, and finally, the
drunkard's picturesque behaviour at the portals of a madhouse.
So fascinated was Penrod that he postponed his departure until this film
came round again, by which time he had finished his unnatural repast
and almost, but not quite, decided against following the profession of a
drunkard when he grew up.
Emerging, satiated, from the theatre, a public timepiece before a
jeweller's shop confronted him with an unexpected dial and imminent
perplexities. How was he to explain at home these hours of dalliance?
There was a steadfast rule that he return direct from Sunday-school; and
Sunday rules were important, because on that day there was his father,
always at home and at hand, perilously ready for action. One of the
hardest conditions of boyhood is the almost continuous strain put upon
the powers of invention by the constant and harassing necessity for
explanations of every natural act.
Proceeding homeward through the deepening twilight as rapidly as
possible, at a gait half skip and half canter, Penrod made up his mind
in what manner he would account for his long delay, and, as he drew
nearer, rehearsed in words the opening passage of his defence.
“Now see here,” he determined to begin; “I do not wished to be blamed
for things I couldn't help, nor any other boy. I was going along the
street by a cottage and a lady put her head out of the window and said
her husband was drunk and whipping her and her little girl, and she
asked me wouldn't I come in and help hold him. So I went in and tried to
get hold of this drunken lady's husband where he was whipping their baby
daughter, but he wouldn't pay any attention, and I TOLD her I ought to
be getting home, but she kep' on askin' me to stay----”
At this point he reached the corner of his own yard, where a coincidence
not only checked the rehearsal of his eloquence but happily obviated all
occasion for it. A cab from the station drew up in front of the gate,
and there descended a troubled lady in black and a fragile little girl
about three. Mrs. Schofield rushed from the house and enfolded both in
hospitable arms.
They were Penrod's Aunt Clara and cousin, also Clara, from Dayton,
Illinois, and in the flurry of their arrival everybody forgot to put
Penrod to the question. It is doubtful, however, if he felt any relief;
there may have been even a slight, unconscious disappointment not
altogether dissimilar to that of an actor deprived of a good part.
In the course of some really necessary preparations for dinner he
stepped from the bathroom into the pink-and-white bedchamber of his
sister, and addressed her rather thickly through a towel.
“When'd mamma find out Aunt Clara and Cousin Clara were coming?”
“Not till she saw them from the window. She just happened to look out
as they drove up. Aunt Clara telegraphed this morning, but it wasn't
delivered.”
“How long they goin' to stay?”
“I don't know.”
Penrod ceased to rub his shining face, and thoughtfully tossed the towel
through the bathroom door. “Uncle John won't try to make 'em come
back home, I guess, will he?” (Uncle John was Aunt Clara's husband, a
successful manufacturer of stoves, and his lifelong regret was that he
had not entered the Baptist ministry.) “He'll let 'em stay here quietly,
won't he?”
“What ARE you talking about?” demanded Margaret, turning from her
mirror. “Uncle John sent them here. Why shouldn't he let them stay?”
Penrod looked crestfallen. “Then he hasn't taken to drink?”
“Certainly not!” She emphasized the denial with a pretty peal of soprano
laughter.
“Then why,” asked her brother gloomily, “why did Aunt Clara look so
worried when she got here?”
“Good gracious! Don't people worry about anything except somebody's
drinking? Where did you get such an idea?”
“Well,” he persisted, “you don't KNOW it ain't that.”
She laughed again, wholeheartedly. “Poor Uncle John! He won't even allow
grape juice or ginger ale in his house. They came because they were
afraid little Clara might catch the measles. She's very delicate, and
there's such an epidemic of measles among the children over in Dayton
the schools had to be closed. Uncle John got so worried that last night
he dreamed about it; and this morning he couldn't stand it any longer
and packed them off over here, though he thinks its wicked to travel
on Sunday. And Aunt Clara was worried when she got here because they'd
forgotten to check her trunk and it will have to be sent by express. Now
what in the name of the common sense put it into your head that Uncle
John had taken to----”
“Oh, nothing.” He turned lifelessly away and went downstairs, a new-born
hope dying in his bosom. Life seems so needlessly dull sometimes.