Turning the corner nearest to the glamoured mansion of the Joneses, the boy jongleur came suddenly face to face with Marjorie, and, in the delicious surprise of the encounter, ceased to play, his hands, in agitation, falling from the instrument.

Bareheaded, the sunshine glorious upon her amber curls, Marjorie was strolling hand-in-hand with her baby brother, Mitchell, four years old.  She wore pink that day—­unforgettable pink, with a broad, black patent-leather belt, shimmering reflections dancing upon its surface.  How beautiful she was!  How sacred the sweet little baby brother, whose privilege it was to cling to that small hand, delicately powdered with freckles.

“Hello, Marjorie,” said Penrod, affecting carelessness.

“Hello!” said Marjorie, with unexpected cordiality.  She bent over her baby brother with motherly affectations.  “Say ‘howdy’ to the gentymuns, Mitchy-Mitch,” she urged sweetly, turning him to face Penrod.

“Won’t!” said Mitchy-Mitch, and, to emphasize his refusal, kicked the gentymuns upon the shin.

Penrod’s feelings underwent instant change, and in the sole occupation of disliking Mitchy-Mitch, he wasted precious seconds which might have been better employed in philosophic consideration of the startling example, just afforded, of how a given law operates throughout the universe in precisely the same manner perpetually.  Mr. Robert Williams would have understood this, easily.

“Oh, oh!” Marjorie cried, and put Mitchy-Mitch behind her with too much sweetness.  “Maurice Levy’s gone to Atlantic City with his mamma,” she remarked conversationally, as if the kicking incident were quite closed.

“That’s nothin’,” returned Penrod, keeping his eye uneasily upon Mitchy-Mitch.  “I know plenty people been better places than that—­Chicago and everywhere.”

There was unconscious ingratitude in his low rating of Atlantic City, for it was largely to the attractions of that resort he owed Miss Jones’ present attitude of friendliness.

Of course, too, she was curious about the accordion.  It would be dastardly to hint that she had noticed a paper bag which bulged the pocket of Penrod’s coat, and yet this bag was undeniably conspicuous—­“and children are very like grown people sometimes!”

Penrod brought forth the bag, purchased on the way at a drug store, and till this moment unopened, which expresses in a word the depth of his sentiment for Marjorie.  It contained an abundant fifteen-cents’ worth of lemon drops, jaw-breakers, licorice sticks, cinnamon drops, and shopworn choclate creams.

“Take all you want,” he said, with off-hand generosity.

“Why, Penrod Schofield,” exclaimed the wholly thawed damsel, “you nice boy!”

“Oh, that’s nothin’,” he returned airily.  “I got a good deal of money, nowadays.”

“Where from?”

“Oh—­just around.”  With a cautious gesture he offered a jaw-breaker to Mitchy-Mitch, who snatched it indignantly and set about its absorption without delay.