Half the members of the class passed out to a recitation-room, the
empurpled Victorine among them, and Miss Spence started the remaining
half through the ordeal of trial by mathematics. Several boys and girls
were sent to the blackboard, and Penrod, spared for the moment, followed
their operations a little while with his eyes, but not with his mind;
then, sinking deeper in his seat, limply abandoned the effort. His eyes
remained open, but saw nothing; the routine of the arithmetic lesson
reached his ears in familiar, meaningless sounds, but he heard nothing;
and yet, this time, he was profoundly occupied. He had drifted away from
the painful land of facts, and floated now in a new sea of fancy which
he had just discovered.
Maturity forgets the marvellous realness of a boy's day-dreams, how
colourful they glow, rosy and living, and how opaque the curtain closing
down between the dreamer and the actual world. That curtain is almost
sound-proof, too, and causes more throat-trouble among parents than is
suspected.
The nervous monotony of the schoolroom inspires a sometimes unbearable
longing for something astonishing to happen, and as every boy's
fundamental desire is to do something astonishing himself, so as to be
the centre of all human interest and awe, it was natural that Penrod
should discover in fancy the delightful secret of self-levitation.
He found, in this curious series of imaginings, during the lesson in
arithmetic, that the atmosphere may be navigated as by a swimmer under
water, but with infinitely greater ease and with perfect comfort in
breathing. In his mind he extended his arms gracefully, at a level with
his shoulders, and delicately paddled the air with his hands, which at
once caused him to be drawn up out of his seat and elevated gently to a
position about midway between the floor and the ceiling, where he
came to an equilibrium and floated; a sensation not the less exquisite
because of the screams of his fellow pupils, appalled by the miracle.
Miss Spence herself was amazed and frightened, but he only smiled down
carelessly upon her when she commanded him to return to earth; and
then, when she climbed upon a desk to pull him down, he quietly paddled
himself a little higher, leaving his toes just out of her reach. Next,
he swam through a few slow somersaults to show his mastery of the new
art, and, with the shouting of the dumfounded scholars ringing in
his ears, turned on his side and floated swiftly out of the window,
immediately rising above the housetops, while people in the street below
him shrieked, and a trolley car stopped dead in wonder.
With almost no exertion he paddled himself, many yards at a stroke, to
the girls' private school where Marjorie Jones was a pupil--Marjorie
Jones of the amber curls and the golden voice! Long before the “Pageant
of the Table Round,” she had offered Penrod a hundred proofs that
she considered him wholly undesirable and ineligible. At the Friday
Afternoon Dancing Class she consistently incited and led the laughter at
him whenever Professor Bartet singled him out for admonition in matters
of feet and decorum. And but yesterday she had chid him for his
slavish lack of memory in daring to offer her a greeting on the way to
Sunday-school. “Well! I expect you must forgot I told you never to speak
to me again! If I was a boy, I'd be too proud to come hanging around
people that don't speak to me, even if I WAS the Worst Boy in Town!”
So she flouted him. But now, as he floated in through the window of her
classroom and swam gently along the ceiling like an escaped toy balloon,
she fell upon her knees beside her little desk, and, lifting up 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 floater; but,
finally, irritated beyond measure by Miss Spence's clamorous insistence,
he was unable to restrain an indignant rebuke and immediately came to
earth with a frightful bump.
Miss Spence--in the flesh--had directed toward the physical body of the
absent Penrod an inquiry as to the fractional consequences of dividing
seventeen apples, fairly, among three boys, and she was surprised and
displeased to receive no answer although to the best of her knowledge
and belief, he was looking fixedly at her. She repeated her question
crisply, without visible effect; then summoned him by name with
increasing asperity. Twice she called him, while all his fellow
pupils turned to stare at the gazing boy. She advanced a step from the
platform.
“Penrod Schofield!”
“Oh, my goodness!” he shouted suddenly. “Can't you keep still a MINUTE?”