It was usually upon Wednesday that his sufferings culminated; the nervous strength accumulated during the holiday hours at the end of the week would carry him through Monday and Tuesday; but by Wednesday it seemed ultimately proven that the next Saturday actually never was coming, "this time", and the strained spirit gave way. Wednesday was the day averaging highest in Penrod's list of absences; but the time came when he felt that the advantages attendant upon his Wednesday "sick headache" did not compensate for its inconveniences.
For one thing, this illness had become so symmetrically recurrent that even the cook felt that he was pushing it too far, and the liveliness of her expression, when he was able to leave his couch and take the air in the backyard at about ten o'clock, became more disagreeable to him with each convalescence. There visibly increased, too, about the whole household, an atmosphere of uncongeniality and suspicion so pronounced that every successive illness was necessarily more severe, and at last the patient felt obliged to remain bedded until almost eleven, from time to time giving forth pathetic little sounds eloquent of anguish triumphing over Stoic endurance, yet lacking a certain conviction of utterance.
Finally, his father enacted, and his mother applied, a new and distinctly special bit of legislation, explaining it with simple candour to the prospective beneficiary.
"Whenever you really ARE sick," they said, "you can go out and play as soon as you're well--that is, if it happens on Saturday.
But when you're sick on a school-day, you'll stay in bed till the next morning. This is going to do you good, Penrod."