justice of her ruling. It seemed, almost, that she feared to argue with
him.

However, the distinction of cane and limp remained to him, consolations
which he protracted far into the week--until Thursday evening, in fact,
when Mr. Schofield, observing from a window his son's pursuit of Duke
round and round the backyard, confiscated the cane, with the promise
that it should not remain idle if he saw Penrod limping again. Thus,
succeeding a depressing Friday, another Saturday brought the necessity
for new inventions.

It was a scented morning in apple-blossom time. At about ten of the
clock Penrod emerged hastily from the kitchen door. His pockets bulged
abnormally; so did his checks, and he swallowed with difficulty. A
threatening mop, wielded by a cooklike arm in a checkered sleeve,
followed him through the doorway, and he was preceded by a small,
hurried, wistful dog with a warm doughnut in his mouth. The kitchen door
slammed petulantly, enclosing the sore voice of Della, whereupon Penrod
and Duke seated themselves upon the pleasant sward and immediately
consumed the spoils of their raid.

From the cross-street which formed the side boundary of the Schofields'
ample yard came a jingle of harness and the cadenced clatter of a pair
of trotting horses, and Penrod, looking up, beheld the passing of a
fat acquaintance, torpid amid the conservative splendours of a rather
old-fashioned victoria. This was Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, a
fellow sufferer at the Friday Afternoon Dancing Class, but otherwise not
often a companion: a home-sheltered lad, tutored privately and preserved
against the coarsening influences of rude comradeship and miscellaneous
information. Heavily overgrown in all physical dimensions, virtuous,