"Just you wait! You'll see!" he prophesied, in a voice now choking, not with ammonia, but with emotion. "Poison a person, and then laugh in his face!"
He spake no more until they had reached their own house, though she made some further futile efforts at explanation and apology.
And after brooding abysmally throughout the meal that followed, he disappeared from the sight of his family, having answered with one frightful look his mother's timid suggestion that it was almost time for Sunday-school. He retired to his eyry--the sawdust box in the empty stable--and there gave rein to his embittered imaginings, incidentally forming many plans for Margaret.
Most of these were much too elaborate; but one was so alluring that he dwelt upon it, working out the details with gloomy pleasure, even after he had perceived its defects. It involved some postponement--in fact, until Margaret should have become the mother of a boy about Penrod's present age. This boy would be precisely like Georgie Bassett--Penrod conceived that as inevitable--and, like Georgie, he would be his mother's idol.
Penrod meant to take him to church and force him to blow his nose with an ammonia-soaked handkerchief in the presence of the Eye and all the congregation.
Then Penrod intended to say to this boy, after church, "Well, that's exackly what your mother did to me, and if you don't like it, you better look out!"
And the real Penrod in the sawdust box clenched his fists. "Come ahead, then!" he muttered. "You talk too much!" Whereupon, the Penrod of his dream gave Margaret's puny son a contemptuous thrashing under the eyes of his mother, who besought in vain for mercy. This plan was finally dropped, not because of any lingering nepotism within Penrod, but because his injury called for action less belated.