“Me?  What number do I go to?” said the stranger, contemptuously.  “I don’t go to no number in vacation!”

“I mean when it ain’t.”

“Third,” returned the fat-faced boy.  “I got ’em all scared in that school.”

“What of?” innocently asked Penrod, to whom “the Third”—­in a distant part of town—­was undiscovered country.

“What of?  I guess you’d soon see what of, if you ever was in that school about one day.  You’d be lucky if you got out alive!”

“Are the teachers mean?”

The other boy frowned with bitter scorn.  “Teachers!  Teachers don’t order me around, I can tell you!  They’re mighty careful how they try to run over Rupe Collins.”

“Who’s Rupe Collins?”

“Who is he?” echoed the fat-faced boy incredulously.  “Say, ain’t you got any sense?”

“What?”

“Say, wouldn’t you be just as happy if you had some sense?”

“Ye-es.”  Penrod’s answer, like the look he lifted to the impressive stranger, was meek and placative.  “Rupe Collins is the principal at your school, guess.”

The other yelled with jeering laughter, and mocked Penrod’s manner and voice. “‘Rupe Collins is the principal at your school, I guess!’” He laughed harshly again, then suddenly showed truculence.  “Say, ’bo, whyn’t you learn enough to go in the house when it rains?  What’s the matter of you, anyhow?”

“Well,” urged Penrod timidly, “nobody ever told me who Rupe Collins is:  I got a right to think he’s the principal, haven’t I?”

The fat-faced boy shook his head disgustedly.  “Honest, you make me sick!”

Penrod’s expression became one of despair.  “Well, who is he?” he cried.

“‘Who is he?’” mocked the other, with a scorn that withered. “’Who is he?’ Me!”

“Oh!” Penrod was humiliated but relieved:  he felt that he had proved himself criminally ignorant, yet a peril seemed to have passed.  “Rupe Collins is your name, then, I guess.  I kind of thought it was, all the time.”

The fat-faced boy still appeared embittered, burlesquing this speech in a hateful falsetto. “‘Rupe Collins is your name, then, I guess!’ Oh, you ‘kind of thought it was, all the time,’ did you?” Suddenly concentrating his brow into a histrionic scowl he thrust his face within an inch of Penrod’s.  “Yes, sonny, Rupe Collins is my name, and you better look out what you say when he’s around or you’ll get in big trouble!  You understand that, ’bo?”

Penrod was cowed but fascinated:  he felt that there was something dangerous and dashing about this newcomer.

“Yes,” he said, feebly, drawing back.  “My name’s Penrod Schofield.”

“Then I reckon your father and mother ain’t got good sense,” said Mr. Collins promptly, this also being formula.

“Why?”

“’Cause if they had they’d of give you a good name!” And the agreeable youth instantly rewarded himself for the wit with another yell of rasping laughter, after which he pointed suddenly at Penrod’s right hand.