“I got it,” said Penrod, discovering the paper in his “Principles of English Composition.”
“Well, we'll listen to what you've found time to prepare,” she said, adding coldly, “for once!”
The frankest pessimism concerning Penrod permeated the whole room; even the eyes of those whose letters had not met with favour turned upon him with obvious assurance that here was every prospect of a performance that would, by comparison, lend a measure of credit to the worst preceding it. But Penrod was unaffected by the general gaze; he rose, still blinking from his lethargy, and in no true sense wholly alive.
He had one idea: to read as rapidly as possible, so as to be done with the task, and he began in a high-pitched monotone, reading with a blind mind and no sense of the significance of the words.
“'Dear friend,”' he declaimed. “'You call me beautiful, but I am not really beautiful, and there are times when I doubt if I am even pretty, though perhaps my hair is beautiful, and if it is true that my eyes are like blue stars in heaven—'”
Simultaneously he lost his breath and there burst upon him a perception of the results to which he was being committed by this calamitous reading. And also simultaneous the outbreak of the class into cachinnations of delight, severely repressed by the perplexed but indignant Miss Spence.
“Go on!” she commanded grimly, when she had restored order.
“Ma'am?” he gulped, looking wretchedly upon the rosy faces all about him.
“Go on with the description of yourself,” she said. “We'd like to hear some more about your eyes being like blue stars in heaven.”
Here many of Penrod's little comrades were forced to clasp their faces tightly in both hands; and his dismayed gaze, in refuge, sought the treacherous paper in his hand.