When Marjorie and Mitchy-Mitch got their breath, they used it vocally; and seldom have more penetrating sounds issued from human throats. Coincidentally, Marjorie, quite baresark, laid hands upon the largest stick within reach and fell upon Penrod with blind fury. He had the presence of mind to flee, and they went round and round the caldron, while Mitchy-Mitch feebly endeavoured to follow--his appearance, in this pursuit, being pathetically like that of a bug fished out of an ink-well, alive but discouraged.
Attracted by the riot, Samuel Williams made his appearance, vaulting a fence, and was immediately followed by Maurice Levy and Georgie Bassett. They stared incredulously at the extraordinary spectacle before them.
"Little GEN-TIL-MUN!" shrieked Marjorie, with a wild stroke that landed full upon Penrod's tarry cap.
"OOOCH!" bleated Penrod.
"It's Penrod!" shouted Sam Williams, recognizing him by the voice. For an instant he had been in some doubt.
"Penrod Schofield!" exclaimed Georgie Bassett. "WHAT does this mean?" That was Georgie's style, and had helped to win him his title.
Marjorie leaned, panting, upon her stick. "I cu-called--uh--him--oh!" she sobbed--"I called him a lul-little--oh--gentleman!
And oh--lul-look!--oh! lul-look at my du-dress! Lul-look at Mu-mitchy--oh--Mitch--oh!"
Unexpectedly, she smote again--with results--and then, seizing the indistinguishable hand of Mitchy-Mitch, she ran wailing homeward down the street.
"`Little gentleman'?" said Georgie Bassett, with some evidences of disturbed complacency. "Why, that's what they call ME!"
"Yes, and you ARE one, too!" shouted the maddened Penrod.
"But you better not let anybody call ME that! I've stood enough around here for one day, and you can't run over ME, Georgie Bassett. Just you put that in your gizzard and smoke it!"
"Anybody has a perfect right," said Georgie, with, dignity, "to call a person a little gentleman. There's lots of names nobody ought to call, but this one's a NICE----"
"You better look out!"
Unavenged bruises were distributed all over Penrod, both upon his body and upon his spirit. Driven by subtle forces, he had dipped his hands in catastrophe and disaster: it was not for a Georgie Bassett to beard him. Penrod was about to run amuck.
"I haven't called you a little gentleman, yet," said Georgie.
"I only said it. Anybody's got a right to SAY it."
"Not around ME! You just try it again and----"
"I shall say it," returned Georgie, "all I please. Anybody in this town has a right to SAY `little gentleman'----"
Bellowing insanely, Penrod plunged his right hand into the caldron, rushed upon Georgie and made awful work of his hair and features.
Alas, it was but the beginning! Sam Williams and Maurice Levy screamed with delight, and, simultaneously infected, danced about the struggling pair, shouting frantically:
"Little gentleman! Little gentleman! Sick him, Georgie!
Sick him, little gentleman! Little gentleman! Little gentleman!"
The infuriated outlaw turned upon them with blows and more tar, which gave Georgie Bassett his opportunity and later seriously impaired the purity of his fame. Feeling himself hopelessly tarred, he dipped both hands repeatedly into the caldron and applied his gatherings to Penrod. It was bringing coals to Newcastle, but it helped to assuage the just wrath of Georgie.
The four boys gave a fine imitation of the Laocoon group complicated by an extra figure frantic splutterings and chokings, strange cries and stranger words issued from this tangle; hands dipped lavishly into the inexhaustible reservoir of tar, with more and more picturesque results. The caldron had been elevated upon bricks and was not perfectly balanced; and under a heavy impact of the struggling group it lurched and went partly over, pouring forth a Stygian tide which formed a deep pool in the gutter.
It was the fate of Master Roderick Bitts, that exclusive and immaculate person, to make his appearance upon the chaotic scene at this juncture. All in the cool of a white "sailor suit," he turned aside from the path of duty--which led straight to the house of a maiden aunt--and paused to hop with joy upon the sidewalk. A repeated epithet continuously half panted, half squawked, somewhere in the nest of gladiators, caught his ear, and he took it up excitedly, not knowing why.
"Little gentleman!" shouted Roderick, jumping up and down in childish glee. "Little gentleman! Little gentleman! Lit----"
A frightful figure tore itself free from the group, encircled this innocent bystander with a black arm, and hurled him headlong. Full length and flat on his face went Roderick into the Stygian pool. The frightful figure was Penrod.
Instantly, the pack flung themselves upon him again, and, carrying them with him, he went over upon Roderick, who from that instant was as active a belligerent as any there.
Thus began the Great Tar Fight, the origin of which proved, afterward, so difficult for parents to trace, owing to the opposing accounts of the combatants. Marjorie said Penrod began it; Penrod said Mitchy-Mitch began it; Sam Williams said Georgie Bassett began it; Georgie and Maurice Levy said Penrod began it;
Roderick Bitts, who had not recognized his first assailant, said Sam Williams began it.
Nobody thought of accusing the barber. But the barber did not begin it; it was the fly on the barber's nose that began it--though, of course, something else began the fly. Somehow, we never manage to hang the real offender.
The end came only with the arrival of Penrod's mother, who had been having a painful conversation by telephone with Mrs.
