These broodings helped a little; but it was a severe morning, and on
his way home at noon he did not recover heart enough to practice the
bullfrog's croak, the craft that Sam Williams had lately mastered to
inspiring perfection. This sonorous accomplishment Penrod had determined
to make his own. At once guttural and resonant, impudent yet plaintive,
with a barbaric twang like the plucked string of a Congo war-fiddle, the
sound had fascinated him. It is made in the throat by processes utterly
impossible to describe in human words, and no alphabet as yet produced
by civilized man affords the symbols to vocalize it to the ear of
imagination. “Gunk” is the poor makeshift that must be employed to
indicate it.
Penrod uttered one half-hearted “Gunk” as he turned in at his own gate.
However, this stimulated him, and he paused to practice. “Gunk!” he
croaked. “Gunk-gunk-gunk-gunk!”
Mrs. Schofield leaned out of an open window upstairs.
“Don't do that, Penrod,” she said anxiously. “Please don't do that.”
“Why not?” Penrod asked, and, feeling encouraged by his progress in the
new art, he continued: “Gunk--gunk-gunk! Gunk-gunk--”
“Please try not to do it,” she urged pleadingly. “You CAN stop it if you
try. Won't you, dear?”
But Penrod felt that he was almost upon the point of attaining a mastery
equal to Sam Williams's. He had just managed to do something in his
throat that he had never done before, and he felt that unless he kept
on doing it at this time, his new-born facility might evade him later.
“Gunk!” he croaked. “Gunk--gunk-gunk!” And he continued to croak,
persevering monotonously, his expression indicating the depth of his
preoccupation.
His mother looked down solicitously, murmured in a melancholy undertone,
shook her head; then disappeared from the window, and, after a moment or
two, opened the front door.
“Come in, dear,” she said; “I've got something for you.”
Penrod's look of preoccupation vanished; he brightened and ceased to
croak. His mother had already given him a small leather pocketbook with
a nickel in it, as a souvenir of her journey. Evidently she had brought
another gift as well, delaying its presentation until now. “I've got
something for you!” These were auspicious words.
“What is it, Mamma?” he asked, and, as she smiled tenderly upon him,
his gayety increased. “Yay!” he shouted. “Mamma, is it that reg'lar
carpenter's tool chest I told you about?”
“No,” she said. “But I'll show you, Penrod. Come on, dear.”
He followed her with alacrity to the dining-room, and the bright
anticipation in his eyes grew more brilliant--until she opened the
door of the china-closet, simultaneously with that action announcing
cheerily:
“It's something that's going to do you lots of good, Penrod.”
He was instantly chilled, for experience had taught him that when
predictions of this character were made, nothing pleasant need be
expected. Two seconds later his last hope departed as she turned from
the closet and he beheld in her hands a quart bottle containing what
appeared to be a section of grassy swamp immersed in a cloudy brown
liquor. He stepped back, grave suspicion in his glance.
“What IS that?” he asked, in a hard voice.
Mrs. Schofield smiled upon him. “It's nothing,” she said. “That is, it's
nothing you'll mind at all. It's just so you won't be so nervous.”
“I'm not nervous.”
“You don't think so, of course, dear,” she returned, and, as she spoke,
she poured some of the brown liquor into a tablespoon. “People often
can't tell when they're nervous themselves; but your Papa and I have
been getting a little anxious about you, dear, and so I got this
medicine for you.”
“WHERE'D you get it?” he demanded.
Mrs. Schofield set the bottle down and moved toward him, insinuatingly
extending the full tablespoon.
“Here, dear,” she said; “just take this little spoonful, like a goo--”
“I want to know where it came from,” he insisted darkly, again stepping
backward.
“Where?” she echoed absently, watching to see that nothing was spilled
from the spoon as she continued to move toward him. “Why, I was talking
to old Mrs. Wottaw at market this morning, and she said her son Clark
used to have nervous trouble, and she told me about this medicine and
how to have it made at the drug store. She told me it cured Clark,
and--”
“I don't want to be cured,” Penrod said, adding inconsistently, “I
haven't got anything to be cured of.”
“Now, dear,” Mrs. Schofield began, “you don't want your papa and me to
keep on worrying about--”
“I don't care whether you worry or not,” the heartless boy interrupted.
“I don't want to take any horrable ole medicine. What's that grass and
weeds in the bottle for?”
Mrs. Schofield looked grieved. “There isn't any grass and there aren't
any weeds; those are healthful herbs.”
“I bet they'll make me sick.”
She sighed. “Penrod, we're trying to make you well.”
“But I AM well, I tell you!”
“No, dear; your papa's been very much troubled about you. Come, Penrod;
swallow this down and don't make such a fuss about it. It's just for
your own good.”
And she advanced upon him again, the spoon extended toward his lips. It
almost touched them, for he had retreated until his back was against
the wall-paper. He could go no farther; but he evinced his unshaken
repugnance by averting his face.
“What's it taste like?” he demanded.
“It's not unpleasant at all,” she answered, poking the spoon at his
mouth. “Mrs. Wottaw said Clark used to be very fond of it. It doesn't
taste like ordinary medicine at all,' she said.”
“How often I got to take it?” Penrod mumbled, as the persistent spoon
sought to enter his mouth. “Just this once?”
“No, dear; three times a day.”
“I won't do it!”
“Penrod!” She spoke sharply. “You swallow this down and stop making such
a fuss. I can't be all day. Hurry.”
She inserted the spoon between his lips, so that its rim touched his
clenched teeth; he was still reluctant. Moreover, is reluctance was
natural and characteristic, for a boy's sense of taste is as simple and
as peculiar as a dog's, though, of course, altogether different from a
dog's. A boy, passing through the experimental age, may eat and drink
astonishing things; but they must be of his own choosing. His palate is
tender, and, in one sense, might be called fastidious; nothing is more
sensitive or more easily shocked. A boy tastes things much more than
grown people taste them: what is merely unpleasant to a man is
sheer broth of hell to a boy. Therefore, not knowing what might be
encountered, Penrod continued to be reluctant.
“Penrod,” his mother exclaimed, losing patience, “I'll call your papa to
make you take it, if you don't swallow it right down! Open your mouth,
Penrod! It isn't going to taste bad at all. Open your mouth--THERE!”
The reluctant jaw relaxed at last, and Mrs. Schofield dexterously
elevated the handle of the spoon so that the brown liquor was deposited
within her son.
“There!” she repeated triumphantly. “It wasn't so bad after all, was
it?”
Penrod did not reply. His expression had become odd, and the oddity of
his manner was equal to that of his expression. Uttering no sound, he
seemed to distend, as if he had suddenly become a pneumatic boy under
dangerous pressure. Meanwhile, his reddening eyes, fixed awfully upon
his mother, grew unbearable.
“Now, it wasn't such a bad taste,” Mrs. Schofield said rather nervously.
“Don't go acting THAT way, Penrod!”
But Penrod could not help himself. In truth, even a grown person
hardened to all manner of flavours, and able to eat caviar or liquid
Camembert, would have found the cloudy brown liquor virulently
repulsive. It contained in solution, with other things, the vital
element of surprise, for it was comparatively odourless, and, unlike the
chivalrous rattlesnake, gave no warning of what it was about to do. In
the case of Penrod, the surprise was complete and its effect visibly
shocking.
The distention by which he began to express his emotion appeared to
be increasing; his slender throat swelled as his cheeks puffed. His
shoulders rose toward his ears; he lifted his right leg in an unnatural
way and held it rigidly in the air.
“Stop that, Penrod!” Mrs. Schofield commanded. “You stop it!”
He found his voice.
“Uff! OOOFF!” he said thickly, and collapsed--a mere, ordinary,
every-day convulsion taking the place of his pneumatic symptoms. He
began to writhe, at the same time opening and closing his mouth rapidly
and repeatedly, waving his arms, stamping on the floor.
“Ow! Ow-ow-OW!” he vociferated.
Reassured by these normal demonstrations, of a type with which she was
familiar, Mrs. Schofield resumed her fond smile.
“YOU'RE all right, little boysie!” she said heartily. Then, picking up
the bottle, she replenished the tablespoon, and told Penrod something
she had considered it undiplomatic to mention before.
“Here's the other one,” she said sweetly.
“Uuf!” he sputtered. “Other--uh--what?”
“Two tablespoons before each meal,” she informed him.
Instantly Penrod made the first of a series of passionate efforts to
leave the room. His determination was so intense and the manifestations
of it were so ruthless, that Mrs. Schofield, exhausted, found herself
obliged to call for the official head of the house--in fact, she found
herself obliged to shriek for him; and Mr. Schofield, hastily entering
the room, beheld his wife apparently in the act of sawing his son back
and forth across the sill of an open window.
Penrod made a frantic effort to reach the good green earth, even after
his mother's clutch upon his ankle had been reenforced by his father's.
Nor was the lad's revolt subdued when he was deposited upon the floor
and the window closed. Indeed, it may be said that he actually never
gave up, though it is a fact that the second potion was successfully
placed inside him. But by the time this feat was finally accomplished,
Mr. Schofield had proved that, in spite of middle age, he was entitled
to substantial claims and honours both as athlete and orator--his
oratory being founded less upon the school of Webster and more upon that
of Jeremiah.
So the thing was done, and the double dose put within the person of
Penrod Schofield. It proved not ineffective there, and presently, as its
new owner sat morosely at table, he began to feel slightly dizzy and
his eyes refused him perfect service. This was natural, because two
tablespoons of the cloudy brown liquor contained about the amount of
alcohol to be found in an ordinary cocktail. Now a boy does not enjoy
the effects of intoxication; enjoyment of that kind is obtained only
by studious application. Therefore, Penrod spoke of his symptoms
complainingly, and even showed himself so vindictive as to attribute
them to the new medicine.
His mother made no reply. Instead, she nodded her head as if some inner
conviction had proven well founded.
“BILIOUS, TOO,” she whispered to her husband.
That evening, during the half-hour preceding dinner, the dining-room was
the scene of another struggle, only a little less desperate than that
which had been the prelude to lunch, and again an appeal to the head of
the house was found necessary. Muscular activity and a liberal imitation
of the jeremiads once more subjugated the rebel--and the same rebellion
and its suppression in a like manner took place the following morning
before breakfast. But this was Saturday, and, without warning or
apparent reason, a remarkable change came about at noon. However, Mr.
and Mrs. Schofield were used to inexplicable changes in Penrod, and they
missed its significance.
When Mrs. Schofield, with dread in her heart, called Penrod into the
house “to take his medicine” before lunch, he came briskly, and took it
like a lamb!
“Why, Penrod, that's splendid!” she cried “You see it isn't bad, at
all.”
“No'm,” he said meekly. “Not when you get used to it.”
“And aren't you ashamed, making all that fuss?” she went on happily.
“Yes'm, I guess so.”
“And don't you feel better? Don't you see how much good it's doing you
already?”
“Yes'm, I guess so.”
Upon a holiday morning, several weeks later, Penrod and Sam Williams
revived a pastime that they called “drug store”, setting up display
counters, selling chemical, cosmetic and other compounds to imaginary
customers, filling prescriptions and variously conducting themselves in
a pharmaceutical manner. They were in the midst of affairs when Penrod
interrupted his partner and himself with a cry of recollection.
“_I_ know!” he shouted. “I got some mighty good ole stuff we want. You
wait!” And, dashing to the house, he disappeared.
Returning immediately, Penrod placed upon the principal counter of the
“drug store” a large bottle. It was a quart bottle, in fact; and it
contained what appeared to be a section of grassy swamp immersed in a
cloudy brown liquor.
“There!” Penrod exclaimed. “How's that for some good ole medicine?”
“It's good ole stuff,” Sam said approvingly. “Where'd you get it? Whose
is it, Penrod?”
“It WAS mine,” said Penrod. “Up to about serreval days ago, it was. They
quit givin' it to me. I had to take two bottles and a half of it.”
“What did you haf to take it for?”
“I got nervous, or sumpthing,” said Penrod.
“You all well again now?”
“I guess so. Uncle Passloe and cousin Ronald came to visit, and I expect
she got too busy to think about it, or sumpthing. Anyway, she quit
makin' me take it, and said I was lots better. She's forgot all about it
by this time.”
Sam was looking at the bottle with great interest.
“What's all that stuff in there, Penrod?” he asked. “What's all that
stuff in there looks like grass?”
“It IS grass,” said Penrod.
“How'd it get there?”
“I stuck it in there,” the candid boy replied. “First they had some
horrable ole stuff in there like to killed me. But after they got three
doses down me, I took the bottle out in the yard and cleaned her all
out and pulled a lot o' good ole grass and stuffed her pretty full and
poured in a lot o' good ole hydrant water on top of it. Then, when they
got the next bottle, I did the same way, and--”
“It don't look like water,” Sam objected.
Penrod laughed a superior laugh.
“Oh, that's nothin',” he said, with the slight swagger of young
and conscious genius. “Of course, I had to slip in and shake her up
sometimes, so's they wouldn't notice.”
“But what did you put in it to make it look like that?”
Penrod, upon the point of replying, happened to glance toward the house.
His gaze, lifting, rested for a moment upon a window. The head of Mrs.
Schofield was framed in that window. She nodded gayly to her son. She
could see him plainly, and she thought that he seemed perfectly healthy,
and as happy as a boy could be. She was right.
“What DID you put in it?” Sam insisted.
And probably it was just as well that, though Mrs. Schofield could see
her son, the distance was too great for her to hear him.
“Oh, nothin',” Penrod replied. “Nothin' but a little good ole mud.”