Mr. Schofield shook his head pityingly.

"I'm afraid she's a goner," he went so far as to say.

"Of all the weird ideas!" cried Margaret.

"I never heard anything like it in my life!" Mrs. Schofield exclaimed.
"Was that ALL she said?"

"Every word!"

Penrod again resumed attention to his soup. His mother looked at him
curiously, and then, struck by a sudden thought, gathered the glances of
the adults of the table by a significant movement of the head, and, by
another, conveyed an admonition to drop the subject until later. Miss
Spence was Penrod's teacher: it was better, for many reasons, not
to discuss the subject of her queerness before him. This was Mrs.
Schofield's thought at the time. Later she had another, and it kept her
awake.

The next afternoon, Mr. Schofield, returning at five o'clock from the
cares of the day, found the house deserted, and sat down to read his
evening paper in what appeared to be an uninhabited apartment known to
its own world as the "drawing-room." A sneeze, unexpected both to him
and the owner, informed him of the presence of another person.

"Where are you, Penrod?" the parent asked, looking about.

"Here," said Penrod meekly.