PENROD

By Booth Tarkington

To
John, Donald And Booth Jameson
From A Grateful Uncle

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I   A BOY AND HIS DOG

CHAPTER II   ROMANCE

CHAPTER III   THE COSTUME

CHAPTER IV   DESPERATION

CHAPTER V   THE PAGEANT OF THE TABLE ROUND

CHAPTER VI   EVENING

CHAPTER VII   EVILS OF DRINK

CHAPTER VIII   SCHOOL

CHAPTER IX   SOARING

CHAPTER X   UNCLE JOHN

CHAPTER XI   FIDELITY OF A LITTLE DOG

CHAPTER XII   MISS RENNSDALE ACCEPTS

CHAPTER XIII   THE SMALLPOX MEDICINE

CHAPTER XIV   MAURICE LEVY'S CONSTITUTION

CHAPTER XV   THE TWO FAMILIES

CHAPTER XVI   THE NEW STAR

CHAPTER XVII   RETIRING FROM THE SHOW BUSINESS

CHAPTER XVIII   MUSIC

CHAPTER XIX   THE INNER BOY

CHAPTER XX   BROTHERS OF ANGELS

CHAPTER XXI   RUPE COLLINS

CHAPTER XXII   THE IMITATOR

CHAPTER XXIII   COLOURED TROOPS IN ACTION

CHAPTER XXIV   "LITTLE GENTLEMAN"

CHAPTER XXV   TAR

CHAPTER XXVI   THE QUIET AFTERNOON

CHAPTER XXVII   CONCLUSION OF THE QUIET AFTERNOON

CHAPTER XXVIII      TWELVE

CHAPTER XXIX   FANCHON

CHAPTER XXX   THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

CHAPTER XXXI   OVER THE FENCE

CHAPTER I A BOY AND HIS DOG

Penrod sat morosely upon the back fence and gazed with envy at Duke, his wistful dog.

A bitter soul dominated the various curved and angular surfaces known by a careless world as the face of Penrod Schofield. Except in solitude, that face was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod had come into his twelfth year wearing an expression carefully trained to be inscrutable. Since the world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere defensive instinct prompted him to give it as little as possible to lay hold upon. Nothing is more impenetrable than the face of a boy who has learned this, and Penrod's was habitually as fathomless as the depth of his hatred this morning for the literary activities of Mrs. Lora Rewbush—an almost universally respected fellow citizen, a lady of charitable and poetic inclinations, and one of his own mother's most intimate friends.

Mrs. Lora Rewbush had written something which she called "The Children's Pageant of the Table Round," and it was to be performed in public that very afternoon at the Women's Arts and Guild Hall for the benefit of the Coloured Infants' Betterment Society. And if any flavour of sweetness remained in the nature of Penrod Schofield after the dismal trials of the school-week just past, that problematic, infinitesimal remnant was made pungent acid by the imminence of his destiny to form a prominent feature of the spectacle, and to declaim the loathsome sentiments of a character named upon the programme the Child Sir Lancelot.

After each rehearsal he had plotted escape, and only ten days earlier there had been a glimmer of light: Mrs. Lora Rewbush caught a very bad cold, and it was hoped it might develop into pneumonia; but she recovered so quickly that not even a rehearsal