His eyes fell slowly and inimically from the brow of Whittier to the braid of reddish hair belonging to Victorine Riordan, the little octoroon girl who sat directly in front of him.  Victorine’s back was as familiar to Penrod as the necktie of Oliver Wendell Holmes.  So was her gayly coloured plaid waist.  He hated the waist as he hated Victorine herself, without knowing why.  Enforced companionship in large quantities and on an equal basis between the sexes appears to sterilize the affections, and schoolroom romances are few.

Victorine’s hair was thick, and the brickish glints in it were beautiful, but Penrod was very tired of it.  A tiny knot of green ribbon finished off the braid and kept it from unravelling; and beneath the ribbon there was a final wisp of hair which was just long enough to repose upon Penrod’s desk when Victorine leaned back in her seat.  It was there now.  Thoughtfully, he took the braid between thumb and forefinger, and, without disturbing Victorine, dipped the end of it and the green ribbon into the inkwell of his desk.  He brought hair and ribbon forth dripping purple ink, and partially dried them on a blotter, though, a moment later when Victorine leaned forward, they were still able to add a few picturesque touches to the plaid waist.

Rudolph Krauss, across the aisle from Penrod, watched the operation with protuberant eyes, fascinated.  Inspired to imitation, he took a piece of chalk from his pocket and wrote “Rats” across the shoulder-blades of the boy in front of him, then looked across appealingly to Penrod for tokens of congratulation.  Penrod yawned.  It may not be denied that at times he appeared to be a very self-centred boy.

CHAPTER IX SOARING

Half the members of the class passed out to a recitation-room, the empurpled Victorine among them, and Miss Spence started the remaining half through the ordeal of trial by mathematics.  Several boys and girls were sent to the blackboard, and Penrod, spared for the moment, followed their operations a little while with his eyes, but not with his mind; then, sinking deeper in his seat, limply abandoned the effort.  His eyes remained open, but saw nothing; the routine of the arithmetic lesson reached his ears in familiar, meaningless sounds, but he heard nothing; and yet, this time, he was profoundly occupied.  He had drifted away from the painful land of facts, and floated now in a new sea of fancy which he had just discovered.

Maturity forgets the marvellous realness of a boy’s day-dreams, how colourful they glow, rosy and living, and how opaque the curtain closing down between the dreamer and the actual world.  That curtain is almost sound-proof, too, and causes more throat-trouble among parents than is suspected.