in town, the year round, and as for the "movie" shows, they could
not have lived an hour unpistoled. In the drug store, where
Penrod bought his candy and soda when he was in funds, he would
linger to turn the pages of periodicals whose illustrations were
fascinatingly pistolic. Some of the magazines upon the very
library table at home were sprinkled with pictures of people
(usually in evening clothes) pointing pistols at other people.
Nay, the Library Board of the town had emitted a "Selected List
of Fifteen Books for Boys," and Penrod had read fourteen of them
with pleasure, but as the fifteenth contained no weapons in the
earlier chapters and held forth little prospect of any shooting
at all, he abandoned it halfway, and read the most sanguinary of
the other fourteen over again. So, the daily food of his
imagination being gun, what wonder that he thirsted for the Real!

He passed from the sidewalk into his own yard, with a subdued
"Bing!" inflicted upon the stolid person of a gatepost, and,
entering the house through the kitchen, ceased to bing for a
time. However, driven back from the fore part of the house by a
dismal sound of callers, he returned to the kitchen and sat down.

"Della," he said to the cook, "do you know what I'd do if you was
a crook and I had my ottomatic with me?"

Della was industrious and preoccupied. "If I was a cook!" she
repeated ignorantly, and with no cordiality. "Well, I AM a cook.
I'm a-cookin' right now. Either g'wan in the house where
y'b'long, or git out in th' yard!"

Penrod chose the latter, and betook himself slowly to the back