"Ma'am?"
"What was it you wanted?" she asked, rather impatiently.
"I was just lookin' for some pins."
"Very well," she said, and handed him two from the shoulder of her blouse.
"I ought to have more," he said. "I want about forty."
"What for?"
"I just want to MAKE sumpthing, Mamma," he said plaintively. "My goodness! Can't I even wnt to have a few pins without everybody makin' such a fuss about it you'd think I was doin' a srime!"
"Doing a what, Penrod?"
"A SRIME!" he repeated, with emphasis; and a moment's reflection enlightened his mother.
"Oh, a crime!" she exclaimed. "You MUST quit reading the murder trials in the newspapers, Penrod. And when you read words you don't know how to pronounce you ought to ask either your papa or me."
"Well, I am askin' you about sumpthing now," Penrod said. "Can't I even have a few PINS without stoppin' to talk about everything in the newspapers, Mamma?"
"Yes," she said, laughing at his seriousness; and she took him to her room, and bestowed upon him five or six rows torn from a paper of pins. "That ought to be plenty," she said, "for whatever you want to make."
And she smiled after his retreating figure, not noting that he looked softly bulky around the body, and held his elbows unnaturally tight to his sides. She was assured of the innocence of anything to be made with pins, and forbore to press investigation. For Penrod to be playing with pins seemed almost girlish. Unhappy woman, it pleased her to have her son seem girlish!
Penrod went out to the stable, tossed his pins into the wheelbarrow, then took from his pocket and unfolded six pairs of long black stockings, indubitably the property of his sister.