Penrod had not hoped much for his experiment; nevertheless his rebellious blood was sensibly inflamed by the failure, and he accompanied his dressing with a low murmuring--apparently a bitter dialogue between himself and some unknown but powerful patron.
Thus he muttered:
"Well, they better NOT!" "Well, what can I DO about it?" "Well, I'D show 'em!" "Well, I WILL show 'em!" "Well, you OUGHT to show 'em; that's the way _I_ do! I just shake 'em around, and say, 'Here! I guess you don't know who you're talkin' to like that!
You better look out!'" "Well, that's the way _I_'m goin' to do!"
"Well, go on and DO it, then!" "Well, I AM goin'--"
The door of the next room was slightly ajar; now it swung wide, and Margaret appeared.
"Penrod, what on earth are you talking about?"
"Nothin'. None o' your--"
"Well, hurry to breakfast, then; it's getting late."
Lightly she went, humming a tune, leaving the door of her room open, and the eyes of Penrod, as he donned his jacket, chanced to fall upon her desk, where she had thoughtlessly left a letter--a private missive just begun, and intended solely for the eyes of Mr. Robert Williams, a senior at a far university.
In such a fashion is coincidence the architect of misfortune.
Penrod's class in English composition had been instructed, the previous day, to concoct at home and bring to class on Wednesday morning, "a model letter to a friend on some subject of general interest." Penalty for omission to perform this simple task was definite; whosoever brought no letter would inevitably be "kept in" after school, that afternoon, until the letter was written, and it was precisely a premonition of this misfortune that had prompted Penrod to attempt his experimental moaning upon his father, for, alas! he had equipped himself with no model letter, nor any letter whatever.
In stress of this kind, a boy's creed is that anything is worth a try; but his eye for details is poor. He sees the future too sweepingly and too much as he would have it seldom providing against inconsistencies of evidence that may damage him. For instance, there is a well-known case of two brothers who exhibited to their parents, with pathetic confidence, several imported dried herring on a string, as a proof that the afternoon had been spent, not at a forbidden circus, but with hook and line upon the banks ef a neighbouring brook.