that face was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod had
come into his twelfth year wearing an expression carefully trained to be
inscrutable. Since the world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere
defensive instinct prompted him to give it as little as possible to lay
hold upon. Nothing is more impenetrable than the face of a boy who has
learned this, and Penrod's was habitually as fathomless as the depth
of his hatred this morning for the literary activities of Mrs. Lora
Rewbush--an almost universally respected fellow citizen, a lady of
charitable and poetic inclinations, and one of his own mother's most
intimate friends.

Mrs. Lora Rewbush had written something which she called "The Children's
Pageant of the Table Round," and it was to be performed in public that
very afternoon at the Women's Arts and Guild Hall for the benefit of the
Coloured Infants' Betterment Society. And if any flavour of sweetness
remained in the nature of Penrod Schofield after the dismal trials of
the school-week just past, that problematic, infinitesimal remnant was
made pungent acid by the imminence of his destiny to form a prominent
feature of the spectacle, and to declaim the loathsome sentiments of a
character named upon the programme the Child Sir Lancelot.

After each rehearsal he had plotted escape, and only ten days earlier
there had been a glimmer of light: Mrs. Lora Rewbush caught a very
bad cold, and it was hoped it might develop into pneumonia; but she
recovered so quickly that not even a rehearsal of the Children's Pageant
was postponed. Darkness closed in. Penrod had rather vaguely debated
plans for a self-mutilation such as would make his appearance as the
Child Sir Lancelot inexpedient on public grounds; it was a heroic
and attractive thought, but the results of some extremely sketchy
preliminary experiments caused him to abandon it.