A sibilance went about the room. "Sweet! How sweet! The sweet little soul! Ah, SWEET!"
"And that very afternoon," continued Mrs. Ba.s.sett, "he had come home in a dreadful state. Penrod had thrown tar all over him."
"Your son has a forgiving spirit!" said Mr. Kinosling with vehemence. "A too forgiving spirit, perhaps." He set down his gla.s.s. "No more, I thank you. No more cake, I thank you. Was it not Cardinal Newman who said----"
He was interrupted by the sounds of an altercation just outside the closed blinds of the window nearest him.
"Let him pick his tree!" It was the voice of Samuel Williams. "Didn"t we come over here to give him one of his own trees? Give him a fair show, can"t you?"
"The little lads!" Mr. Kinosling smiled. "They have their games, their outdoor sports, their pastimes. The young muscles are toughening. The sun will not harm them. They grow; they expand; they learn. They learn fair play, honour, courtesy, from one another, as pebbles grow round in the brook. They learn more from themselves than from us. They take shape, form, outline. Let them."
"Mr. Kinosling!" Another spinster--undeterred by what had happened to Miss Beam--leaned fair forward, her face shining and ardent. "Mr.
Kinosling, there"s a question I DO wish to ask you."
"My dear Miss Cosslit," Mr. Kinosling responded, again waving his hand and watching it, "I am entirely at your disposal."
"WAS Joan of Arc," she asked fervently, "inspired by spirits?"
He smiled indulgently. "Yes--and no," he said. "One must give both answers. One must give the answer, yes; one must give the answer, no."
"Oh, THANK you!" said Miss Cosslit, blushing.
"She"s one of my great enthusiasms, you know."
"And I have a question, too," urged Mrs. Lora Rewbush, after a moment"s hasty concentration. ""I"ve never been able to settle it for myself, but NOW----"
"Yes?" said Mr. Kinosling encouragingly.
"Is--ah--is--oh, yes: Is Sanskrit a more difficult language than Spanish, Mr. Kinosling?"
"It depends upon the student," replied the oracle smiling. "One must not look for linguists everywhere. In my own especial case--if one may cite one"s self as an example--I found no great, no insurmountable difficulty in mastering, in conquering either."
"And may _I_ ask one?" ventured Mrs. Ba.s.sett. "Do you think it is right to wear egrets?"
"There are marks of quality, of caste, of social distinction," Mr.
Kinosling began, "which must be permitted, allowed, though perhaps regulated. Social distinction, one observes, almost invariably implies spiritual distinction as well. Distinction of circ.u.mstances is accompanied by mental distinction. Distinction is hereditary; it descends from father to son, and if there is one thing more true than "Like father, like son," it is--" he bowed gallantly to Mrs.
Ba.s.sett--"it is, "Like mother, like son." What these good ladies have said this afternoon of YOUR----"
This was the fatal instant. There smote upon all ears the voice of Georgie, painfully shrill and penetrating--fraught with protest and protracted, strain. His plain words consisted of the newly sanctioned and disinfected curse with a big H.
With an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of horror, Mrs. Ba.s.sett sprang to the window and threw open the blinds.
Georgie"s back was disclosed to the view of the tea-party. He was endeavouring to ascend a maple tree about twelve feet from the window.
Embracing the trunk with arms and legs, he had managed to squirm to a point above the heads of Penrod and Herman, who stood close by, watching him earnestly--Penrod being obviously in charge of the performance.
Across the yard were Sam Williams and Maurice Levy, acting as a jury on the question of voice-power, and it was to a complaint of theirs that Georgie had just replied.
"That"s right, Georgie," said Penrod encouragingly. "They can, too, hear you. Let her go!"
"Going to heaven!" shrieked Georgie, squirming up another inch. "Going to heaven, heaven, heaven!"
His mother"s frenzied attempts to attract his attention failed utterly.
Georgie was using the full power of his lungs, deafening his own ears to all other sounds. Mrs. Ba.s.sett called in vain; while the tea-party stood petrified in a cl.u.s.ter about the window.
"Going to heaven!" Georgie bellowed. "Going to heaven! Going to heaven, my Lord! Going to heaven, heaven, heaven!"
He tried to climb higher, but began to slip downward, his exertions causing damage to his apparel. A b.u.t.ton flew into the air, and his knickerbockers and his waistband severed relations.
"Devil"s got my coat-tails, sinners! Old devil"s got my coat-tails!" he announced appropriately. Then he began to slide.
He relaxed his clasp of the tree and slid to the ground.
"Going to h.e.l.l!" shrieked Georgie, reaching a high pitch of enthusiasm in this great climax. "Going to h.e.l.l! Going to h.e.l.l! I"m gone to h.e.l.l, h.e.l.l, h.e.l.l!"
With a loud scream, Mrs. Ba.s.sett threw herself out of the window, alighting by some miracle upon her feet with ankles unsprained.
Mr. Kinosling, feeling that his presence as spiritual adviser was demanded in the yard, followed with greater dignity through the front door. At the corner of the house a small departing figure collided with him violently. It was Penrod, tactfully withdrawing from what promised to be a family scene of unusual painfulness.
Mr. Kinosling seized him by the shoulders and, giving way to emotion, shook him viciously.
"You horrible boy!" exclaimed Mr. Kinosling. "You ruffianly creature! Do you know what"s going to happen to you when you grow up? Do you realize what you"re going to BE!"
With flashing eyes, the indignant boy made know his unshaken purpose. He shouted the reply:
"A minister!"
CHAPTER XXVIII TWELVE
This busy globe which sp.a.w.ns us is as incapable of flattery and as intent upon its own affair, whatever that is, as a gyroscope; it keeps steadily whirling along its lawful track, and, thus far seeming to hold a right of way, spins doggedly on, with no perceptible diminution of speed to mark the most gigantic human events--it did not pause to pant and recuperate even when what seemed to Penrod its princ.i.p.al purpose was accomplished, and an enormous shadow, vanishing westward over its surface, marked the dawn of his twelfth birthday.
To be twelve is an attainment worth the struggle. A boy, just twelve, is like a Frenchman just elected to the Academy.
Distinction and honour wait upon him. Younger boys show deference to a person of twelve: his experience is guaranteed, his judgment, therefore, mellow; consequently, his influence is profound. Eleven is not quite satisfactory: it is only an approach. Eleven has the disadvantage of six, of nineteen, of forty-four, and of sixty-nine. But, like twelve, seven is an honourable age, and the ambition to attain it is laudable.
People look forward to being seven. Similarly, twenty is worthy, and so, arbitrarily, is twenty-one; forty-five has great solidity; seventy is most commendable and each year thereafter an increasing honour. Thirteen is embarra.s.sed by the beginnings of a new colthood; the child becomes a youth. But twelve is the very top of boyhood.
Dressing, that morning, Penrod felt that the world was changed from the world of yesterday. For one thing, he seemed to own more of it; this day was HIS day. And it was a day worth owning; the midsummer sunshine, pouring gold through his window, came from a cool sky, and a breeze moved pleasantly in his hair as he leaned from the sill to watch the tribe of clattering blackbirds take wing, following their leader from the trees in the yard to the day"s work in the open country. The blackbirds were his, as the sunshine and the breeze were his, for they all belonged to the day which was his birthday and therefore most surely his. Pride suffused him: he was twelve!
His father and his mother and Margaret seemed to understand the difference between to-day and yesterday. They were at the table when he descended, and they gave him a greeting which of itself marked the milestone. Habitually, his entrance into a room where his elders sat brought a cloud of apprehension: they were p.r.o.ne to look up in pathetic expectancy, as if their thought was, "What new awfulness is he going to start NOW?" But this morning they laughed; his mother rose and kissed him twelve times, so did Margaret; and his father shouted, "Well, well!
How"s the MAN?"
Then his mother gave him a Bible and "The Vicar of Wakefield"; Margaret gave him a pair of silver-mounted hair brushes; and his father gave him a "Pocket Atlas" and a small compa.s.s.
"And now, Penrod," said his mother, after breakfast, "I"m going to take you out in the country to pay your birthday respects to Aunt Sarah Crim."
Aunt Sarah Crim, Penrod"s great-aunt, was his oldest living relative.
She was ninety, and when Mrs. Schofield and Penrod alighted from a carriage at her gate they found her digging with a spade in the garden.
"I"m glad you brought him," she said, desisting from labour. "Jinny"s baking a cake I"m going to send for his birthday party. Bring him in the house. I"ve got something for him."