"Lo, Sam!" said Maurice cautiously. "What you doin'?"
Penrod at that instant had a singular experience--an intellectual shock like a flash of fire in the brain. Sitting in darkness, a great light flooded him with wild brilliance. He gasped!
"What you doin'?" repeated Mr. Levy.
Penrod sprang to his feet, seized the licorice bottle, shook it with stoppering thumb, and took a long drink with histrionic unction.
"What you doin'?" asked Maurice for the third time, Sam Williams not having decided upon a reply.
It was Penrod who answered.
"Drinkin' lickrish water," he said simply, and wiped his mouth with such delicious enjoyment that Sam's jaded thirst was instantly stimulated. He took the bottle eagerly from Penrod.
"A-a-h!" exclaimed Penrod, smacking his lips. "That was a good un!"
The eyes above the fence glistened.
"Ask him if he don't want some," Penrod whispered urgently.
"Quit drinkin' it! It's no good any more. Ask him!"
"What for?" demanded the practical Sam.
"Go on and ask him!" whispered Penrod fiercely.
"Say, M'rice!" Sam called, waving the bottle. "Want some?"
"Bring it here!" Mr. Levy requested.
"Come on over and get some," returned Sam, being prompted.
"I can't. Penrod Schofield's after me."
"No, I'm not," said Penrod reassuringly. "I won't touch you, M'rice. I made up with you yesterday afternoon--don't you remember? You're all right with me, M'rice."
Maurice looked undecided. But Penrod had the delectable bottle again, and tilting it above his lips, affected to let the cool liquid purl enrichingly into him, while with his right hand he stroked his middle facade ineffably. Maurice's mouth watered.
"Here!" cried Sam, stirred again by the superb manifestations of his friend. "Gimme that!"
Penrod brought the bottle down, surprisingly full after so much gusto, but withheld it from Sam; and the two scuffled for its possession. Nothing in the world could have so worked upon the desire of the yearning observer beyond the fence.
"Honest, Penrod--you ain't goin' to touch me if I come in your yard?" he called. "Honest?"
"Cross my heart!" answered Penrod, holding the bottle away from Sam. "And we'll let you drink all you want."
Maurice hastily climbed the fence, and while he was thus occupied Mr. Samuel Williams received a great enlightenment.
With startling rapidity Penrod, standing just outside the storeroom door, extended his arm within the room, deposited the licorice water upon the counter of the drug store, seized in its stead the bottle of smallpox medicine, and extended it cordially toward the advancing Maurice.
Genius is like that--great, simple, broad strokes!
Dazzled, Mr. Samuel Williams leaned against the wall. He had the sensations of one who comes suddenly into the presence of a chef-d'oeuvre. Perhaps his first coherent thought was that almost universal one on such huge occasions: "Why couldn't _I_ have done that!"
Sam might have been even more dazzled had he guessed that he figured not altogether as a spectator in the sweeping and magnificent conception of the new Talleyrand. Sam had no partner for the cotillon. If Maurice was to be absent from that festivity--as it began to seem he might be--Penrod needed a male friend to take care of Miss Rennsdale and he believed he saw his way to compel Mr. Williams to be that male friend. For this he relied largely upon the prospective conduct of Miss Rennsdale when he should get the matter before her--he was inclined to believe she would favour the exchange. As for Talleyrand Penrod himself, he was going to dance that cotillon with Marjorie Jones!
"You can have all you can drink at one pull, M'rice," said Penrod kindly.
"You said I could have all I want!" protested Maurice, reaching for the bottle.
"No, I didn't," returned Penrod quickly, holding it away from the eager hand.
"He did, too! Didn't he, Sam?"
Sam could not reply; his eyes, fixed upon the bottle, protruded strangely.
"You heard him--didn't you, Sam?"
"Well, if I did say it I didn't mean it!" said Penrod hastily, quoting from one of the authorities. "Looky here, M'rice," he continued, assuming a more placative and reasoning tone, "that wouldn't be fair to us. I guess we want some of our own lickrish water, don't we? The bottle ain't much over two-thirds full anyway. What I meant was, you can have all you can drink at one pull."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, this way: you can gulp all you want, so long as you keep swallering; but you can't take the bottle out of your mouth and commence again. Soon's you quit swallering it's Sam's turn."
"No; you can have next, Penrod," said Sam.
"Well, anyway, I mean M'rice has to give the bottle up the minute he stops swallering."
Craft appeared upon the face of Maurice, like a poster pasted on a wall.
"I can drink so long I don't stop swallering?"
"Yes; that's it."
"All right!" he cried. "Gimme the bottle!"
And Penrod placed it in his hand.
"You promise to let me drink until I quit swallering?"
Maurice insisted.
"Yes!" said both boys together.
With that, Maurice placed the bottle to his lips and began to drink. Penrod and Sam leaned forward in breathless excitement.
They had feared Maurice might smell the contents of the bottle; but that danger was past--this was the crucial moment. Their fondest hope was that he would make his first swallow a voracious one--it was impossible to imagine a second. They expected one big, gulping swallow and then an explosion, with fountain effects.
Little they knew the mettle of their man! Maurice swallowed once; he swallowed twice--and thrice--and he continued to swallow! No Adam's apple was sculptured on that juvenile throat, but the internal progress of the liquid was not a whit the less visible. His eyes gleamed with cunning and malicious triumph, sidewise, at the stunned conspirators; he was fulfilling the conditions of the draught, not once breaking the thread of that marvelous swallering.
