CHAPTER XV: THE TWO FAMILIES
CHAPTER XV: THE TWO FAMILIES.
Grayscale illustration of a boy.
Penrod | ||
15. CHAPTER XV: THE TWO FAMILIES
116
[Description: CHAPTER XV: THE TWO FAMILIES.
Grayscale illustration of a boy.
]
Penrod entered the schoolroom, Monday picturesquely leaning upon a man's cane shortened to support a cripple approaching the age of twelve. He arrived about twenty minutes late, limping deeply, his brave young mouth drawn with pain, and the sensation he created must have been a solace to him; the only possible criticism of this entrance being that it was just a shade too heroic. Perhaps for that reason it failed to stagger Miss Spence, a woman so saturated with suspicion that she penalized Penrod for tardiness as promptly and as coldly as if he had been a mere,
However, the distinction of cane and limp remained to him, consolations which he protracted far into the week — until Thursday evening, in fact, when Mr. Schofield, observing from a window his son's pursuit of Duke round and round the backyard, confiscated the cane, with the promise that it should not remain idle if he saw Penrod limping again. Thus, succeeding a depressing Friday, another Saturday brought the necessity for new inventions.
It was a scented morning in apple-blossom time. At about ten of the clock Penrod emerged hastily from the kitchen door. His pockets bulged abnormally; so did his checks, and he swallowed with difficulty. A threatening mop, wielded by a cooklike arm in a checkered sleeve, followed him through the doorway, and he was preceded by a small, hurried, wistful dog with a warm doughnut in his mouth. The kitchen door slammed petulantly, enclosing the sore voice of Della, whereupon Penrod and Duke seated themselves upon the pleasant sward and immediately consumed the spoils of their raid.
From the cross-street which formed the side boundary of the Schofields' ample yard came a jingle of harness and the cadenced clatter of a pair of trotting horses, and Penrod, looking up, beheld the passing of a fat acquaintance, torpid amid the conservative
The Magsworth Bittses were important because they were
impressive; there was no other reason. And they were impressive
because they believed themselves important. The adults of the
family were impregnably formal; they dressed with reticent
elegance, and wore the same nose and the same expression — an
expression which indicated that they knew something exquisite and
sacred which other people could never know. Other people, in
their presence, were apt to feel mysteriously ignoble and to
become secretly uneasy about ancestors, gloves, and
pronunciation. The Magsworth Bitts manner was withholding and
reserved, though sometimes gracious, granting small smiles as
great favours and giving off a chilling kind of preciousness.
Naturally,
At about ten of the clock Penrod emerged hastily from the
kitchen door
[Description: Grayscale illustration of a boy and a dog rushing out a door.
]
Magsworth was the important part of the name. Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts was a Magsworth born, herself, and the Magsworth crest decorated not only Mrs. Magsworth Bitts' note-paper but was on the china, on the table linen, on the chimney-pieces, on the opaque glass of the front door, on the victoria, and on the harness, though omitted from the garden-hose and the lawn-mower.
Naturally, no sensible person dreamed of connecting that illustrious crest with the unfortunate and notorious Rena Magsworth whose name had grown week by week into larger and larger type upon the front pages of newspapers, owing to the gradually increasing public and official belief that she had poisoned a family of eight. However, the statement that no sensible person could have connected the
Penrod never missed a murder, a hanging or an electrocution in the newspapers; he knew almost as much about Rena Magsworth as her jurymen did, though they sat in a court-room two hundred miles away, and he had it in mind — so frank he was — to ask Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, if the murderess happened to be a relative.
The present encounter, being merely one of apathetic greeting, did not afford the opportunity. Penrod took off his cap, and Roderick, seated between his mother and one of his grown-up sisters, nodded sluggishly, but neither Mrs. Magsworth Bitts nor her daughter acknowledged the salutation of the boy in the yard. They disapproved of him as a person of little consequence, and that little, bad. Snubbed, Penrod thoughtfully restored his cap to his head. A boy can be cut as effectually as a man, and this one was chilled to a low temperature. He wondered if they despised him because they had seen a last fragment of doughnut in his hand; then he thought that perhaps it was Duke who had disgraced him. Duke was certainly no fashionable looking dog.
The resilient spirits of youth, however, presently revived, and discovering a spider upon one knee and a beetle simultaneously upon the other, Penrod forgot Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts in the course of some experiments infringing upon the domain of
Penrod at once took possession, retiring to the empty stable, where he installed the rats in a small wooden box with a sheet of broken window-glass — held down by a brickbat — over the top. Thus the symptoms of their agitation, when the box was shaken or hammered upon, could be studied at leisure. Altogether this Saturday was starting splendidly.
After a time, the student's attention was withdrawn from his specimens by a peculiar smell, which, being followed up by a system of selective sniffing, proved to be an emanation leaking into the stable from the alley. He opened the back door.
Across the alley was a cottage which a thrifty neighbour had built on the rear line of his lot and rented to negroes; and the fact that a negro family was now in process of "moving in" was manifested by the presence of a thin mule and a ramshackle wagon, the latter laden with the semblance of a stove and a few other unpretentious household articles.
A very small darky boy stood near the mule. In
"What's that 'coon's name?" asked Penrod, intending no discourtesy.
"Aim gommo mame," said the small darky.
"What?"
"Aim gommo mame."
" What?"
The small darky looked annoyed.
Aim gommo mame, I hell you," he said impatiently.
Penrod conceived that insult was intended.
"What's the matter of you?" he demanded advancing. "You get fresh with me, and I'll — — "
"Hyuh, white boy!" A coloured youth of Penrod's own age appeared in the doorway of the cottage. "You let 'at brothuh mine alone. He ain' do nothin' to you."
"Well, why can't he answer?"
"He can't. He can't talk no better'n what he was talkin'. He tongue-tie'."
"Oh," said Penrod, mollified. Then, obeying an impulse so universally aroused in the human breast under like circumstances that it has become a quip, he turned to the afflicted one.
"Talk some more," he begged eagerly.
"I hoe you ackoom aim gommo mame," was the prompt response, in which a slight ostentation was manifest. Unmistakable tokens of vanity had appeared upon the small, swart countenance.
"What's he mean?" asked Penrod, enchanted. "He say he tole you 'at 'coon ain' got no name."
"What's your name?"
"I'm name Herman."
"What's his name?" Penrod pointed to the tongue-tied boy.
"Verman."
"What!"
"Verman. Was three us boys in ow fam'ly. Ol'est one name Sherman. 'N'en come me; I'm Herman. 'N'en come him; he Verman. Sherman dead. Verman, he de littles' one."
"You goin' to live here?"
"Umhuh. Done move in f'm way outen on a fahm."
He pointed to the north with his right hand, and Penrod's eyes opened wide as they followed the
"Look there!" exclaimed Penrod. "You haven't got any finger!"
" I mum map," said Verman, with egregious pride.
" He done 'at," interpreted Herman, chuckling. "Yessuh; done chop 'er spang off, long 'go. He's a playin' wif a ax an' I lay my finguh on de do'-sill an' I say, `Verman, chop 'er off!' So Verman he chop 'er right spang off up to de roots! Yessuh."
"What for?"
"Jes' fo' nothin'."
"He hoe me hoo," remarked Verman.
"Yessuh, I tole him to," said Herman, "an' he chop 'er off, an' ey ain't airy oth' one evuh grown on wheres de ole one use to grow. Nosuh!"
"But what'd you tell him to do it for?"
"Nothin'. I 'es' said it 'at way — an' he jes' chop er off!"
Both brothers looked pleased and proud. Penrod's profound interest was flatteringly visible, a tribute to their unusualness.
"Hem bow goy," suggested Verman eagerly.
"Aw ri'," said Herman. "Ow sistuh Queenie, she a growed-up woman; she got a goituh."
"Got a what?"
"Goituh. Swellin' on her neck — grea' big swellin'. She heppin' mammy move in now. You look in de front-room winduh wheres she sweepin'; you kin see it on her."
Penrod looked in the window and was rewarded by a fine view of Queenie's goitre. He had never before seen one, and only the lure of further conversation on the part of Verman brought him from the window.
"Verman say tell you 'bout pappy," explained Herman. "Mammy an' Queenie move in town an' go git de house all fix up befo' pappy git out."
"Out of where?"
"Jail. Pappy cut a man, an' de police done kep' him in jail evuh sense Chris'mus-time; but dey goin' tuhn him loose ag'in nex' week."
"What'd he cut the other man with?"
"Wif a pitchfawk."
Penrod began to feel that a lifetime spent with this fascinating family were all too short. The brothers, glowing with amiability, were as enraptured as he. For the first time in their lives they moved in the rich glamour of sensationalism. Herman was prodigal of gesture with his right hand; and Verman, chuckling with delight, talked fluently, though somewhat consciously. They cheerfully agreed to keep the raccoon — already beginning to be mentioned as "our 'coon" by Penrod — in Mr. Schofield's empty stable, and, when the animal had been chained to the wall near the box of rats and supplied with a pan of fair water, they assented to their new friend's suggestion (inspired by a fine
At this juncture was heard from the front yard the sound of that yodelling which is the peculiar accomplishment of those whose voices have not "changed." Penrod yodelled a response; and Mr. Samuel Williams appeared, a large bundle under his arm.
"Yay, Penrod!" was his greeting, casual enough from without; but, having entered, he stopped short and emitted a prodigious whistle. " Ya-a-ay!" he then shouted. "Look at the 'coon!"
"I guess you better say, `Look at the 'coon!'" Penrod returned proudly. "They's a good deal more'n him to look at, too. Talk some, Verman." Verman complied.
Sam was warmly interested. "What'd you say his name was?" he asked.
"Verman."
"How d'you spell it?"
"V-e-r-m-a-n," replied Penrod, having previously received this information from Herman.
"Oh!" said Sam.
"Point to sumpthing, Herman," Penrod commanded, and Sam's excitement, when Herman pointed was sufficient to the occasion.
Penrod, the discoverer, continued his exploitation of the manifold wonders of the Sherman, Herman,
The cumulative effect was enormous, and could have but one possible result. The normal boy is always at least one half Barnum.
"Let's get up a SHOW!"
Penrod and Sam both claimed to have said it first, a question left unsettled in the ecstasies of hurried preparation. The bundle under Sam's arm, brought with no definite purpose, proved to have been an inspiration. It consisted of broad sheets of light yellow wrapping-paper, discarded by Sam's mother in her spring house-cleaning. There were half-filled cans and buckets of paint in the storeroom adjoining the carriage-house, and presently the side wall of the stable flamed information upon the passer-by from a great and spreading poster.
"Publicity," primal requisite of all theatrical and amphitheatrical enterprise thus provided, subsequent arrangements proceeded with a fury of energy which transformed the empty hay-loft. True, it is impossible to say just what the hay-loft was transformed into, but history warrantably clings to the statement that it was transformed. Duke and Sherman were secured to the rear wall at a considerable
It was regretfully decided, in council, that no attempt be made to add Queenie to the list of exhibits, her brothers warmly declining to act as ambassadors in that cause. They were certain Queenie would not like the idea, they said, and Herman picturesquely described her activity on occasions when she had been annoyed by too much attention to her appearance. However, Penrod's disappointment was alleviated by an inspiration which came to him in a moment of pondering upon the dachshund, and the
They found a group of seven, including two adults, already
gathered in the street to read and admire this work.
SCHoFiELD & WiLLiAMS
BiG SHOW
ADMiSSioN 1 CENT oR 20 PiNS
MUSUEM oF CURioSiTES
Now GoiNG oN
SHERMAN HERMAN & VERMAN
THiER FATHERS iN JAiL STABED A
MAN WiTH A
PiTCHFORK
SHERMAN THE WiLD ANIMAL
CAPTURED iN AFRiCA
HERMAN THE ONE FiNGERED TATOOD
WILD MAN VERMAN THE SAVAGE TATOOD
WILD BoY TALKS ONLY iN HiS NAiTiVE
LANGUAGS. Do NoT FAIL TO SEE DUKE
THE INDiAN DOG ALSO THE MiCHiGAN
TRAiNED RATS
A heated argument took place between Sam and Penrod, the point at issue being settled, finally, by the drawing of straws; whereupon Penrod, with
AMERiCAN DoG PART ALLIGATOR.
CHAPTER XV: THE TWO FAMILIES
CHAPTER XV: THE TWO FAMILIES.
Grayscale illustration of a boy.
Penrod | ||