"She's my aunt!" shouted Roddy.

Silence followed. Sam and Penrod, spellbound, gazed upon Roderick
Magsworth Bitts, Junior. So did Herman and Verman. Roddy's staggering
lie had changed the face of things utterly. No one questioned it; no one
realized that it was much too good to be true.

"Roddy," said Penrod, in a voice tremulous with hope, "Roddy, will you
join our show?"

Roddy joined.

Even he could see that the offer implied his being starred as the
paramount attraction of a new order of things. It was obvious that he
had swelled out suddenly, in the estimation of the other boys, to that
importance which he had been taught to believe his native gift and
natural right. The sensation was pleasant. He had often been treated
with effusion by grown-up callers and by acquaintances of his mothers
and sisters; he had heard ladies speak of him as "charming" and "that
delightful child," and little girls had sometimes shown him deference,
but until this moment no boy had ever allowed him, for one moment, to
presume even to equality. Now, in a trice, he was not only admitted
to comradeship, but patently valued as something rare and sacred to be
acclaimed and pedestalled. In fact, the very first thing that Schofield
and Williams did was to find a box for him to stand upon.

The misgivings roused in Roderick's bosom by the subsequent activities
of the firm were not bothersome enough to make him forego his prominence
as Exhibit A. He was not a "quick-minded" boy, and it was long (and
much happened) before he thoroughly comprehended the causes of his new