“It don't look like water,” Sam objected.
Penrod laughed a superior laugh.
“Oh, that's nothin',” he said, with the slight swagger of young and conscious genius. “Of course, I had to slip in and shake her up sometimes, so's they wouldn't notice.”
“But what did you put in it to make it look like that?”
Penrod, upon the point of replying, happened to glance toward the house. His gaze, lifting, rested for a moment upon a window. The head of Mrs. Schofield was framed in that window. She nodded gayly to her son. She could see him plainly, and she thought that he seemed perfectly healthy, and as happy as a boy could be. She was right.
“What DID you put in it?” Sam insisted.
And probably it was just as well that, though Mrs. Schofield could see her son, the distance was too great for her to hear him.
“Oh, nothin',” Penrod replied. “Nothin' but a little good ole mud.”