He had not an idea, but he felt one coming, and replied automatically, in a plaintive tone:
"I guess anybody that had been through what I had to go through, last night, would think they had an excuse."
Miss Spence resumed her seat, though with the air of being ready to leap from it instantly.
"What has last night to do with your insolence to me this morning?"
"Well, I guess you"d see," he returned, emphasizing the plaintive note, "if you knew what I know."
"Now, Penrod," she said, in a kinder voice, "I have a high regard for your mother and father, and it would hurt me to distress them, but you must either tell me what was the matter with you or I"ll have to take you to Mrs. Houston."
"Well, ain"t I going to?" he cried, spurred by the dread name. "It"s because I didn"t sleep last night."
"Were you ill?" The question was put with some dryness.
He felt the dryness. "No"m; _I_ wasn"t."
"Then if someone in your family was so ill that even you were kept up all night, how does it happen they let you come to school this morning?"
"It wasn"t illness," he returned, shaking his head mournfully. "It was lots worse"n anybody"s being sick. It was--it was--well, it was jest awful."
"WHAT was?" He remarked with anxiety the incredulity in her tone.
"It was about Aunt Clara," he said.
"Your Aunt Clara!" she repeated. "Do you mean your mother"s sister who married Mr. Farry of Dayton, Illinois?"
"Yes--Uncle John," returned Penrod sorrowfully. "The trouble was about him."
Miss Spence frowned a frown which he rightly interpreted as one of continued suspicion. "She and I were in school together," she said. "I used to know her very well, and I"ve always heard her married life was entirely happy. I don"t----"
"Yes, it was," he interrupted, "until last year when Uncle John took to running with travelling men----"
"What?"
"Yes"m." He nodded solemnly. "That was what started it. At first he was a good, kind husband, but these travelling men would coax him into a saloon on his way home from work, and they got him to drinking beer and then ales, wines, liquors, and cigars----"
"Penrod!"
"Ma"am?"
"I"m not inquiring into your Aunt Clara"s private affairs; I"m asking you if you have anything to say which would palliate----"
"That"s what I"m tryin" to TELL you about, Miss Spence," he pleaded,--"if you"d jest only let me. When Aunt Clara and her little baby daughter got to our house last night----"
"You say Mrs. Farry is visiting your mother?"
"Yes"m--not just visiting--you see, she HAD to come. Well of course, little baby Clara, she was so bruised up and mauled, where he"d been hittin" her with his cane----"
"You mean that your uncle had done such a thing as THAT!" exclaimed Miss Spence, suddenly disarmed by this scandal.
"Yes"m, and mamma and Margaret had to sit up all night nursin" little Clara--and AUNT Clara was in such a state SOMEBODY had to keep talkin"
to HER, and there wasn"t anybody but me to do it, so I----"
"But where was your father?" she cried.
"Ma"am?"
"Where was your father while----"
"Oh--papa?" Penrod paused, reflected; then brightened. "Why, he was down at the train, waitin" to see if Uncle John would try to follow "em and make "em come home so"s he could persecute "em some more. I wanted to do that, but they said if he did come I mightn"t be strong enough to hold him and----" The brave lad paused again, modestly. Miss Spence"s expression was encouraging. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, and there may have been in them, also, the mingled beginnings of admiration and self-reproach. Penrod, warming to his work, felt safer every moment.
"And so," he continued, "I had to sit up with Aunt Clara. She had some pretty big bruises, too, and I had to----"
"But why didn"t they send for a doctor?" However, this question was only a flicker of dying incredulity.
"Oh, they didn"t want any DOCTOR," exclaimed the inspired realist promptly. "They don"t want anybody to HEAR about it because Uncle John might reform--and then where"d he be if everybody knew he"d been a drunkard and whipped his wife and baby daughter?"
"Oh!" said Miss Spence.
"You see, he used to be upright as anybody," he went on explanatively.
"It all begun----"
"Began, Penrod."
"Yes"m. It all commenced from the first day he let those travelling men coax him into the saloon." Penrod narrated the downfall of his Uncle John at length. In detail he was nothing short of plethoric; and incident followed incident, sketched with such vividness, such abundance of colour, and such verisimilitude to a drunkard"s life as a drunkard"s life should be, that had Miss Spence possessed the rather chilling attributes of William J. Burns himself, the last trace of skepticism must have vanished from her mind. Besides, there are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink. And in every sense it was a moving picture which, with simple but eloquent words, the virtuous Penrod set before his teacher.
His eloquence increased with what it fed on; and as with the eloquence so with self-reproach in the gentle bosom of the teacher. She cleared her throat with difficulty once or twice, during his description of his ministering night with Aunt Clara. "And I said to her, "Why, Aunt Clara, what"s the use of takin" on so about it?" And I said, "Now, Aunt Clara, all the crying in the world can"t make things any better." And then she"d just keep catchin" hold of me, and sob and kind of holler, and I"d say, "DON"T cry, Aunt Clara--PLEASE don"t cry.""
Then, under the influence of some fragmentary survivals of the respectable portion of his Sunday adventures, his theme became more exalted; and, only partially misquoting a phrase from a psalm, he related how he had made it of comfort to Aunt Clara, and how he had besought her to seek Higher guidance in her trouble.
The surprising thing about a structure such as Penrod was erecting is that the taller it becomes the more ornamentation it will stand. Gifted boys have this faculty of building magnificence upon cobwebs--and Penrod was gifted. Under the spell of his really great performance, Miss Spence gazed more and more sweetly upon the prodigy of spiritual beauty and goodness before her, until at last, when Penrod came to the explanation of his "just thinking," she was forced to turn her head away.
"You mean, dear," she said gently, "that you were all worn out and hardly knew what you were saying?"
"Yes"m."
"And you were thinking about all those dreadful things so hard that you forgot where you were?"
"I was thinking," he said simply, "how to save Uncle John."
And the end of it for this mighty boy was that the teacher kissed him!
CHAPTER XI FIDELITY OF A LITTLE DOG
The returning students, that afternoon, observed that Penrod"s desk was vacant--and nothing could have been more impressive than that sinister mere emptiness. The accepted theory was that Penrod had been arrested.
How breathtaking, then, the sensation when, at the beginning of the second hour, he strolled--in with inimitable carelessness and, rubbing his eyes, somewhat noticeably in the manner of one who has s.n.a.t.c.hed an hour of much needed sleep, took his place as if nothing in particular had happened. This, at first supposed to be a superhuman exhibition of sheer audacity, became but the more dumfounding when Miss Spence--looking up from her desk--greeted him with a pleasant little nod. Even after school, Penrod gave numerous maddened investigators no relief. All he would consent to say was: