"Oh, my goodness!" moaned Penrod; and in desperation he drew forth from his pocket his entire fortune. "All right, Verman," he said resignedly. "If you won't do it any other way, here's a nickel, and you can go and buy you some peanuts when we get through. But if I give you this money, you got to promise to wait till we ARE through, and you got to promise to do anything I tell you to. You goin' to promise?"
The eyes of Verman glistened; he returned, gave bond, and, grasping the coin, burst into the rich laughter of a gourmand.
Penrod immediately painted him dead white above the eyes, all round his head and including his hair. It took all the paint in the can.
Then the artist mentioned the presence of Mrs. Williams's cat, explained in full his ideas concerning the docile animal, and the long black snake, and Della and her friend, Mrs. Cullen, while Verman listened with anxiety, but remained true to his oath.
They removed the stocking at the end of the long black snake, and cut four holes in the foot and ankle of it. They removed the excelsior, placed Mrs. Williams's cat in tbe stocking, shook her down into the lower section of it; drew her feet through the four holes there, leaving her head in the toe of the stocking; then packed the excelsior down on top of her, and once more attached the stocking to the rest of the long, black snake.
How shameful is the ease of the historian! He sits in his dressing-gown to write: "The enemy attacked in force--" The tranquil pen, moving in a cloud of tobacco smoke, leaves upon the page its little hieroglyphics, serenely summing up the monstrous deeds and sufferings of men of action. How cold, how niggardly, to state merely that Penrod and the painted Verman succeeded in giving the long, black snake a motive power, or tractor, apparently its own but consisting of Mrs. Williams's cat!