"Georgie Bassett, you may read your letter next."
The neat Georgie rose, nothing loath, and began: "'Dear Teacher--'"
There was a slight titter, which Miss Spence suppressed. Georgie was not at all discomfited.
"'My mother says,'" he continued, reading his manuscript, "'we should treat our teacher as a friend, and so _I_ will write YOU a letter.'"
This penetrated Penrod's trance, and he lifted his eyes to fix them upon the back of Georgie Bassett's head in a long and inscrutable stare. It was inscrutable, and yet if Georgie had been sensitive to thought waves, it is probable that he would have uttered a loud shriek; but he remained placidly unaware, continuing:
"'I thought I would write you about a subject of general interest, and so I will write you about the flowers. There are many kinds of flowers, spring flowers, and summer flowers, and autumn flowers, but no winter flowers. Wild flowers grow in the woods, and it is nice to hunt them in springtime, and we must remember to give some to the poor and hospitals, also. Flowers can be made to grow in flower-beds and placed in vases in houses.
There are many names for flowers, but _I_ call them "nature's ornaments.--'"
Penrod's gaze had relaxed, drooped to his button again, and his lethargy was renewed. The outer world grew vaguer; voices seemed to drone at a distance; sluggish time passed heavily--but some of it did pass.
"Penrod!"
Miss Spence's searching eye had taken note of the bent head and the twisting button. She found it necessary to speak again.
"Penrod Schofield!"
He came languidly to life.
"Ma'am?"
"You may read your letter."
"Yes'm."
And he began to paw clumsily among his books, whereupon Miss Spence's glance fired with suspicion.
"Have you prepared one?" she demanded.
"Yes'm," said Penrod dreamily.
"But you're going to find you forgot to bring it, aren't you?"
"I got it," said Penrod, discovering the paper in his "Principles of English Composition."
"Well, we'll listen to what you've found time to prepare," she said, adding coldly, "for once!"
The frankest pessimism concerning Penrod permeated the whole room; even the eyes of those whose letters had not met with favour turned upon him with obvious assurance that here was every prospect of a performance that would, by comparison, lend a measure of credit to the worst preceding it. But Penrod was unaffected by the general gaze; he rose, still blinking from his lethargy, and in no true sense wholly alive.
He had one idea: to read as rapidly as possible, so as to be done with the task, and he began in a high-pitched monotone, reading with a blind mind and no sense of the significance of the words.
"'Dear friend,"' he declaimed. "'You call me beautiful, but I am not really beautiful, and there are times when I doubt if I am even pretty, though perhaps my hair is beautiful, and if it is true that my eyes are like blue stars in heaven--'"
Simultaneously he lost his breath and there burst upon him a perception of the results to which he was being committed by this calamitous reading. And also simultaneous the outbreak of the class into cachinnations of delight, severely repressed by the perplexed but indignant Miss Spence.
"Go on!" she commanded grimly, when she had restored order.
"Ma'am?" he gulped, looking wretchedly upon the rosy faces all about him.
"Go on with the description of yourself," she said. "We'd like to hear some more about your eyes being like blue stars in heaven."
Here many of Penrod's little comrades were forced to clasp their faces tightly in both hands; and his dismayed gaze, in refuge, sought the treacherous paper in his hand.
What it beheld there was horrible.
"Proceed!" Miss Spence said.
"'I--often think,'" he faltered, "'and a-a tree-more th-thrills my bein' when I REcall your last words to me--that last--that last--that--'"
"GO ON!"
"'That last evening in the moonlight when you--you-- you--'"
"Penrod," Miss Spence said dangerously, "you go on, and stop that stammering."
"'You--you said you would wait for--for years to--to--to--to--"
"PENROD!"
"'To win me!'" the miserable Penrod managed to gasp. "'I should not have pre--premitted--permitted you to speak so until we have our--our parents' con-consent; but oh, how sweet it--'" He exhaled a sigh of agony, and then concluded briskly, "'Yours respectfully, Penrod Schofield.'"
But Miss Spence had at last divined something, for she knew the Schofield family.
"Bring me that letter!" she said.
And the scarlet boy passed forward between rows of mystified but immoderately uplifted children.
Miss Spence herself grew rather pink as she examined the missive, and the intensity with which she afterward extended her examination to cover the complete field of Penrod Schofield caused him to find a remote centre of interest whereon to rest his embarrassed gaze. She let him stand before her throughout a silence, equalled, perhaps, by the tenser pauses during trials for murder, and then, containing herself, she sweepingly gestured him to the pillory--a chair upon the platform, facing the school.
Here he suffered for the unusual term of an hour, with many jocular and cunning eyes constantly upon him; and, when he was released at noon, horrid shouts and shrieks pursued him every step of his homeward way. For his laughter-loving little schoolmates spared him not--neither boy nor girl.
"Yay, Penrod!" they shouted. "How's your beautiful hair?" And, "Hi, Penrod! When you goin' to get your parents' consent?" And, "Say, blue stars in heaven, how's your beautiful eyes?" And, "Say, Penrod, how's your tree-mores?" "Does your tree-mores thrill your bein', Penrod?" And many other facetious inquiries, hard to bear in public.
And when he reached the temporary shelter of his home, he experienced no relief upon finding that Margaret was out for lunch. He was as deeply embittered toward her as toward any other, and, considering her largely responsible for his misfortune, he would have welcomed an opportunity to show her what he thought of her.
