barn, he felt something in the air about the kitchen which warned him
that new tortures awaited him.

[Illustration: ... _fought boys who were three classes above him ...
whipped groups of boys of assorted sizes_.]

A boy would rather take a dozen whippings at school than have the
story of one of them come home; and Piggy thought with inward
trembling that he would rather report even a whipping at home than
face his mother in the dishonor which covered him. At supper Mrs.
Pennington repeated the legend of the note with great solemnity. When
her husband showed signs of laughing, she glared at him. Her son ate
rapidly in silence. Over his mother's shoulders Piggy saw the hired
girl giggle. The only reply that Mrs. Pennington could get to her
questions was, "Aw, that ain't nothin'," or "Aw, gee whiz, ma, you
must think that's somethin'." But she proclaimed, in the presence of
the father, the son, and the hired girl, that if she ever caught a
boy of hers getting "girl-struck" she would "show him," which, being
translated, means much that no dignified young gentleman likes to
contemplate. But when the son was out of hearing, Mrs. Pennington told
her husband, in the repressed tone which she used when expressing her
diplomatic communications, that he would have "to take that boy in
hand." Whereupon the father leaned back in his chair and laughed,
laughed until he grew red in the face, laughed till the pans in the
kitchen rattled, laughed--to use the words of his wife in closing the
incident--"like a natural born simpleton."

[Illustration: _Her son ate rapidly in silence_.]

[Illustration: _Over his mother's shoulders Piggy saw the hired girl