other boys. Then he noticed that a safety-pin had opened; one of those
connecting the stockings with his trunks. He sat down to fasten it
and his eye fell for the first time with particular attention upon the
trunks. Until this instant he had been preoccupied with the stockings.

Slowly recognition dawned in his eyes.

The Schofields' house stood on a corner at the intersection of two
main-travelled streets; the fence was low, and the publicity obtained by
the washable portion of the family apparel, on Mondays, had often been
painful to Penrod; for boys have a peculiar sensitiveness in these
matters. A plain, matter-of-fact washerwoman' employed by Mrs.
Schofield, never left anything to the imagination of the passer-by; and
of all her calm display the scarlet flaunting of his father's winter
wear had most abashed Penrod. One day Marjorie Jones, all gold and
starch, had passed when the dreadful things were on the line: Penrod had
hidden himself, shuddering. The whole town, he was convinced, knew these
garments intimately and derisively.

And now, as he sat in the janitor's chair, the horrible and paralyzing
recognition came. He had not an instant's doubt that every fellow actor,
as well as every soul in the audience, would recognize what his mother
and sister had put upon him. For as the awful truth became plain to
himself it seemed blazoned to the world; and far, far louder than the
stockings, the trunks did fairly bellow the grisly secret: WHOSE they
were and WHAT they were!

Most people have suffered in a dream the experience of finding
themselves very inadequately clad in the midst of a crowd of
well-dressed people, and such dreamers' sensations are comparable to