What it beheld there was horrible.
“Proceed!” Miss Spence said.
“'I—often think,'” he faltered, “'and a-a tree-more th-thrills my bein' when I REcall your last words to me—that last—that last—that—'”
“GO ON!”
“'That last evening in the moonlight when you—you—you—'”
“Penrod,” Miss Spence said dangerously, “you go on, and stop that stammering.”
“'You—you said you would wait for—for years to—to—to—to—”
“PENROD!”
“'To win me!'” the miserable Penrod managed to gasp. “'I should not have pre—premitted—permitted you to speak so until we have our—our parents' con-consent; but oh, how sweet it—'” He exhaled a sigh of agony, and then concluded briskly, “'Yours respectfully, Penrod Schofield.'”
But Miss Spence had at last divined something, for she knew the Schofield family.