still evading.

"Well, then, how'd you BE a show?" Penrod demanded. "WE got a show here,
even if Herman didn't point or Verman didn't talk. Their father stabbed
a man with a pitchfork, I guess, didn't he?"

"How do _I_ know?"

"Well, I guess he's in jail, ain't he?"

"Well, what if their father is in jail? I didn't say he wasn't, did I?"

"Well, YOUR father ain't in jail, is he?"

"Well, I never said he was, did I?"

"Well, then," continued Penrod, "how could you be a----" He stopped
abruptly, staring at Roderick, the birth of an idea plainly visible in
his altered expression. He had suddenly remembered his intention to
ask Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, about Rena Magsworth, and this
recollection collided in his mind with the irritation produced by
Roderick's claiming some mysterious attainment which would warrant his
setting up as a show in his single person. Penrod's whole manner changed
instantly.

"Roddy," he asked, almost overwhelmed by a prescience of something vast
and magnificent, "Roddy, are you any relation of Rena Magsworth?"

Roderick had never heard of Rena Magsworth, although a concentration
of the sentence yesterday pronounced upon her had burned, black and