"Well, what you want?" Penrod asked, brusquely.
Marjorie's wonderful eyes were dark and mysterious, like still water at twilight.
"What makes you behave so AWFUL?" she whispered.
"I don't either! I guess I got a right to do the way I want to, haven't I?"
"Well, anyway," said Marjorie, "you ought to quit bumping into people so it hurts."
"Poh! It wouldn't hurt a fly!"
"Yes, it did. It hurt when you bumped Maurice and me that time."
"It didn't either. WHERE'D it hurt you? Let's see if it--"
"Well, I can't show you, but it did. Penrod, are you going to keep on?"
Penrod's heart had melted within him; but his reply was pompous and cold. "I will if I feel like it, and I won't if I feel like it. You wait and see."
But Marjorie jumped up and ran around to him abandoning her escort. All the children were leaving their chairs and moving toward the dancing-rooms; the orchestra was playing dance-music again.
"Come on, Penrod!" Marjorie cried. "Let's go dance this together.
Come on!"
With seeming reluctance, he suffered her to lead him away. "Well, I'll go with you; but I won't dance," he said "I wouldn't dance with the President of the United States."
"Why, Penrod?"
"Well--because well, I won't DO it!"
"All right. I don't care. I guess I've danced plenty, anyhow.
Let's go in here." She led him into a room too small for dancing, used ordinarily by Miss Amy Rennsdale's father as his study, and now vacant. For a while there was silence; but finally Marjorie pointed to the window and said shyly "Look, Penrod, it's getting dark. The party'll be over pretty soon, and you've never danced one single time!"
"Well, I guess I know that, don't I?"
He was unable to cast aside his outward truculence though it was but a relic. However, his voice was gentler, and Marjorie seemed satisfied. From the other rooms came the swinging music, shouts of "Gotcher bumpus!" sounds of stumbling, of scrambling, of running, of muffled concus signs and squeals of dismay. Penrod's followers were renewing the wild work, even in the absence of their chief.
"Penrod Schofield, you bad boy," said Marjorie, "you started every bit of that! You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"_I_ didn't do anything," he said--and he believed it. "Pick on me for everything!"
"Well, they wouldn't if you didn't do so much," said Marjorie.
"They would, too."
"They wouldn't, either. Who would?"
"That Miss Lowe," he specified bitterly. "Yes, and Baby Rennsdale's aunts. If the house'd burn down, I bet they'd say Penrod Schofield did it! Anybody does anything at ALL, they say, 'Penrod Schofield, shame on you!' When you and Carlie were dan--"
"Penrod, I just hate that little Carlie Chitten. P'fesser Bartet made me learn that dance with him; but I just hate him."
Penrod was now almost completely mollified; nevertheless, he continued to set forth his grievance. "Well, they all turned around to me and they said, 'Why, Penrod Schofield, shame on you!' And I hadn't done a single thing! I was just standin' there. They got to blame ME, though!"
Marjorie laughed airily. "Well, if you aren't the foolishest--"
"They would, too," he asserted, with renewed bitterness. "If the house was to fall down, you'd see! They'd all say--"
Marjorie interrupted him. She put her hand on the top of her head, looking a little startled.
"What's that?" she said.
"What's what?"
"Like rain!" Marjorie cried. "Like it was raining in here! A drop fell on my--"
"Why, it couldn't--" he began. But at this instant a drop fell upon his head, too, and, looking up, they beheld a great oozing splotch upon the ceiling. Drops were gathering upon it and falling; the tinted plaster was cracking, and a little stream began to patter down and splash upon the floor. Then there came a resounding thump upstairs, just above them, and fragments of wet plaster fell.
"The roof must be leaking," said Marjorie, beginning to be alarmed.
"Couldn't be the roof," said Penrod. "Besides there ain't any rain outdoors."
As he spoke, a second slender stream of water began to patter upon the floor of the hall outside the door.
"Good gracious!" Marjorie cried, while the ceiling above them shook as with earthquake--or as with boys in numbers jumping, and a great uproar burst forth overhead.
"I believe the house IS falling down, Penrod!" she quavered.
"Well, they'll blame ME for it!" he said. "Anyways, we better get out o' here. I guess sumpthing must be the matter."
His guess was accurate, so far as it went. The dance-music had swung into "Home Sweet Home" some time before, the children were preparing to leave, and Master Chitten had been the first boy to ascend to the gentlemen's dressing-room for his cap, overcoat and shoes, his motive being to avoid by departure any difficulty in case his earlier activities should cause him to be suspected by the other boys. But in the doorway he halted, aghast.
The lights had not been turned on; but even the dim windows showed that the polished floor gave back reflections no floor-polish had ever equalled. It was a gently steaming lake, from an eighth to a quarter of an inch deep. And Carlie realized that he had forgotten to turn off the faucets in the bathroom.
For a moment, his savoir faire deserted him, and he was filled with ordinary, human-boy panic. Then, at a sound of voices behind him, he lost his head and rushed into the bathroom. It was dark, but certain sensations and the splashing of his pumps warned him that the water was deeper in there. The next instant the lights were switched on in both bathroom and dressing-room, and Carlie beheld Sam Williams in the doorway of the former.
"Oh, look, Maurice!" Sam shouted, in frantic excitement.
"Somebody's let the tub run over, and it's about ten feet deep! Carlie Chitten's sloshin' around in here. Let's hold the door on him and keep him in!"
