"What has last night to do with your insolence to me this morning?"
"Well, I guess you'd see," he returned, emphasizing the plaintive note, "if you knew what I know."
"Now, Penrod," she said, in a kinder voice, "I have a high regard for your mother and father, and it would hurt me to distress them, but you must either tell me what was the matter with you or I'll have to take you to Mrs. Houston."
"Well, ain't I going to?" he cried, spurred by the dread name. "It's because I didn't sleep last night."
"Were you ill?" The question was put with some dryness.
He felt the dryness. "No'm; _I_ wasn't."
"Then if someone in your family was so ill that even you were kept up all night, how does it happen they let you come to school this morning?"
"It wasn't illness," he returned, shaking his head mournfully. "It was lots worse'n anybody's being sick. It was--it was--well, it was jest awful."
"WHAT was?" He remarked with anxiety the incredulity in her tone.
"It was about Aunt Clara," he said.
"Your Aunt Clara!" she repeated. "Do you mean your mother's sister who married Mr. Farry of Dayton, Illinois?"
"Yes--Uncle John," returned Penrod sorrowfully. "The trouble was about him."
Miss Spence frowned a frown which he rightly interpreted as one of continued suspicion. "She and I were in school together," she said. "I used to know her very well, and I've always heard her married life was entirely happy. I don't----"
"Yes, it was," he interrupted, "until last year when Uncle John took to running with travelling men----"
"What?"
"Yes'm." He nodded solemnly. "That was what started it. At first he was a good, kind husband, but these travelling men would coax him into a saloon on his way home from work, and they got him to drinking beer and then ales, wines, liquors, and cigars----"
"Penrod!"
"Ma'am?"
"I'm not inquiring into your Aunt Clara's private affairs;
I'm asking you if you have anything to say which would palliate----"
"That's what I'm tryin' to TELL you about, Miss Spence," he pleaded,--"if you'd jest only let me. When Aunt Clara and her little baby daughter got to our house last night----"
"You say Mrs. Farry is visiting your mother?"
"Yes'm--not just visiting--you see, she HAD to come.
Well of course, little baby Clara, she was so bruised up and mauled, where he'd been hittin' her with his cane----"
"You mean that your uncle had done such a thing as THAT!" exclaimed Miss Spence, suddenly disarmed by this scandal.
"Yes'm, and mamma and Margaret had to sit up all night nursin' little Clara--and AUNT Clara was in such a state SOMEBODY had to keep talkin' to HER, and there wasn't anybody but me to do it, so I----"
"But where was your father?" she cried.
"Ma'am?"
"Where was your father while----"
"Oh--papa?" Penrod paused, reflected; then brightened.
"Why, he was down at the train, waitin' to see if Uncle John would try to follow 'em and make 'em come home so's he could persecute 'em some more. I wanted to do that, but they said if he did come I mightn't be strong enough to hold him and----"
