“It's not unpleasant at all,” she answered, poking the spoon at his mouth. “Mrs. Wottaw said Clark used to be very fond of it. It doesn't taste like ordinary medicine at all,' she said.”
“How often I got to take it?” Penrod mumbled, as the persistent spoon sought to enter his mouth. “Just this once?”
“No, dear; three times a day.”
“I won't do it!”
“Penrod!” She spoke sharply. “You swallow this down and stop making such a fuss. I can't be all day. Hurry.”
She inserted the spoon between his lips, so that its rim touched his clenched teeth; he was still reluctant. Moreover, is reluctance was natural and characteristic, for a boy's sense of taste is as simple and as peculiar as a dog's, though, of course, altogether different from a dog's. A boy, passing through the experimental age, may eat and drink astonishing things; but they must be of his own choosing. His palate is tender, and, in one sense, might be called fastidious; nothing is more sensitive or more easily shocked. A boy tastes things much more than grown people taste them: what is merely unpleasant to a man is sheer broth of hell to a boy. Therefore, not knowing what might be encountered, Penrod continued to be reluctant.
“Penrod,” his mother exclaimed, losing patience, “I'll call your papa to make you take it, if you don't swallow it right down! Open your mouth, Penrod! It isn't going to taste bad at all. Open your mouth—THERE!”
The reluctant jaw relaxed at last, and Mrs. Schofield dexterously elevated the handle of the spoon so that the brown liquor was deposited within her son.
“There!” she repeated triumphantly. “It wasn't so bad after all, was it?”
Penrod did not reply. His expression had become odd, and the oddity of his manner was equal to that of his expression. Uttering no sound, he seemed to distend, as if he had suddenly become a pneumatic boy under dangerous pressure. Meanwhile, his reddening eyes, fixed awfully upon his mother, grew unbearable.