There was no escape; and at last his hour was hard upon him. Therefore
he brooded on the fence and gazed with envy at his wistful Duke.

The dog's name was undescriptive of his person, which was obviously
the result of a singular series of mesalliances. He wore a grizzled
moustache and indefinite whiskers; he was small and shabby, and looked
like an old postman. Penrod envied Duke because he was sure Duke would
never be compelled to be a Child Sir Lancelot. He thought a dog free and
unshackled to go or come as the wind listeth. Penrod forgot the life he
led Duke.

There was a long soliloquy upon the fence, a plaintive monologue without
words: the boy's thoughts were adjectives, but they were expressed by
a running film of pictures in his mind's eye, morbidly prophetic of the
hideosities before him. Finally he spoke aloud, with such spleen that
Duke rose from his haunches and lifted one ear in keen anxiety.

"'I hight Sir Lancelot du Lake, the Child,
Gentul-hearted, meek, and mild.
What though I'm BUT a littul child,
Gentul-hearted, meek, and----' OOF!"

All of this except "oof" was a quotation from the Child Sir Lancelot, as
conceived by Mrs. Lora Rewbush. Choking upon it, Penrod slid down from
the fence, and with slow and thoughtful steps entered a one-storied wing
of the stable, consisting of a single apartment, floored with cement and
used as a storeroom for broken bric-a-brac, old paint-buckets, decayed
garden-hose, worn-out carpets, dead furniture, and other condemned odds
and ends not yet considered hopeless enough to be given away.