Simultaneously, the noon whistles began to blow, far and near; and the romancer in the sawdust-box, summoned prosaically from steep mountain passes above the clouds, paused with stubby pencil halfway from lip to knee.  His eyes were shining:  there was a rapt sweetness in his gaze.  As he wrote, his burden had grown lighter; thoughts of Mrs. Lora Rewbush had almost left him; and in particular as he recounted (even by the chaste dash) the annoyed expressions of Mr. Wilson, the wounded detective, and the silken moustached mule-driver, he had felt mysteriously relieved concerning the Child Sir Lancelot.  Altogether he looked a better and a brighter boy.

“Pen-rod!”

The rapt look faded slowly.  He sighed, but moved not.

“Penrod!  We’re having lunch early just on your account, so you’ll have plenty of time to be dressed for the pageant.  Hurry!”

There was silence in Penrod’s aerie.

“Pen-rod!”

Mrs. Schofields voice sounded nearer, indicating a threatened approach.  Penrod bestirred himself:  he blew out the lantern, and shouted plaintively: 

“Well, ain’t I coming fast’s I can?”

“Do hurry,” returned the voice, withdrawing; and the kitchen door could be heard to close.

Languidly, Penrod proceeded to set his house in order.

Replacing his manuscript and pencil in the cigar-box, he carefully buried the box in the sawdust, put the lantern and oil-can back in the soap-box, adjusted the elevator for the reception of Duke, and, in no uncertain tone, invited the devoted animal to enter.

Duke stretched himself amiably, affecting not to hear; and when this pretence became so obvious that even a dog could keep it up no longer, sat down in a corner, facing it, his back to his master, and his head perpendicular, nose upward, supported by the convergence of the two walls.  This, from a dog, is the last word, the comble of the immutable.  Penrod commanded, stormed, tried gentleness; persuaded with honeyed words and pictured rewards.  Duke’s eyes looked backward; otherwise he moved not.  Time elapsed.  Penrod stooped to flattery, finally to insincere caresses; then, losing patience spouted sudden threats.

Duke remained immovable, frozen fast to his great gesture of implacable despair.

A footstep sounded on the threshold of the store-room.

“Penrod, come down from that box this instant!”

“Ma’am?”

“Are you up in that sawdust-box again?” As Mrs. Schofield had just heard her son’s voice issue from the box, and also, as she knew he was there anyhow, her question must have been put for oratorical purposes only.  “Because if you are,” she continued promptly, “I’m going to ask your papa not to let you play there any——­”

Penrod’s forehead, his eyes, the tops of his ears, and most of his hair, became visible to her at the top of the box.  “I ain’t ‘playing!’” he said indignantly.