Penrod again resumed attention to his soup.  His mother looked at him curiously, and then, struck by a sudden thought, gathered the glances of the adults of the table by a significant movement of the head, and, by another, conveyed an admonition to drop the subject until later.  Miss Spence was Penrod’s teacher:  it was better, for many reasons, not to discuss the subject of her queerness before him.  This was Mrs. Schofield’s thought at the time.  Later she had another, and it kept her awake.

The next afternoon, Mr. Schofield, returning at five o’clock from the cares of the day, found the house deserted, and sat down to read his evening paper in what appeared to be an uninhabited apartment known to its own world as the “drawing-room.”  A sneeze, unexpected both to him and the owner, informed him of the presence of another person.

“Where are you, Penrod?” the parent asked, looking about.

“Here,” said Penrod meekly.

Stooping, Mr. Schofield discovered his son squatting under the piano, near an open window—­his wistful Duke lying beside him.

“What are you doing there?”

“Me?”

“Why under the piano?”

“Well,” the boy returned, with grave sweetness, “I was just kind of sitting here—­thinking.”

“All right.”  Mr. Schofield, rather touched, returned to the digestion of a murder, his back once more to the piano; and Penrod silently drew from beneath his jacket (where he had slipped it simultaneously with the sneeze) a paper-backed volume entitled:  “Slimsy, the Sioux City Squealer, or, ‘Not Guilty, Your Honor.’”

In this manner the reading-club continued in peace, absorbed, contented, the world well forgot—­until a sudden, violently irritated slam-bang of the front door startled the members; and Mrs. Schofield burst into the room and threw herself into a chair, moaning.

“What’s the matter, mamma?” asked her husband laying aside his paper.

“Henry Passloe Schofield,” returned the lady, “I don’t know what is to be done with that boy; I do not!”

“You mean Penrod?”

“Who else could I mean?” She sat up, exasperated, to stare at him.  “Henry Passloe Schofield, you’ve got to take this matter in your hands—­it’s beyond me!”

“Well, what has he——­”

“Last night I got to thinking,” she began rapidly, “about what Clara told us—­thank Heaven she and Margaret and little Clara have gone to tea at Cousin Charlotte’s!—­but they’ll be home soon—­about what she said about Miss Spence——­”

“You mean about Penrod’s being a comfort?”

“Yes, and I kept thinking and thinking and thinking about it till I couldn’t stand it any——­”

“By George!” shouted Mr. Schofield startlingly, stooping to look under the piano.  A statement that he had suddenly remembered his son’s presence would be lacking in accuracy, for the highly sensitized Penrod was, in fact, no longer present.  No more was Duke, his faithful dog.