“I believe I will take my hat now, little gentleman.”
“Here it is,” said Penrod, unexpectedly climbing over the porch railing, in the other direction. His mother and father and Margaret had supposed him to be standing in the hallway out of deference, and because he thought it tactful not to interrupt the recitations. All of them remembered, later, that this supposed thoughtfulness on his part struck them as unnatural.
“Very good, little gentleman!” said Mr. Kinosling, and being somewhat chilled, placed the hat firmly upon his head, pulling it down as far as it would go. It had a pleasant warmth, which he noticed at once. The next instant, he noticed something else, a peculiar sensation of the scalp—a sensation which he was quite unable to define. He lifted his hand to take the hat off, and entered upon a strange experience: his hat seemed to have decided to remain where it was.
“Do you like Tennyson as much as Longfellow, Mr. Kinosling?” inquired Margaret.
“I—ah—I cannot say,” he returned absently. “I—ah—each has his own—ugh! flavour and savour, each his—ah—ah——”
Struck by a strangeness in his tone, she peered at him curiously through the dusk. His outlines were indistinct, but she made out that his arms were, uplifted in a singular gesture. He seemed to be wrenching at his head.
“Is—is anything the matter?” she asked anxiously. “Mr. Kinosling, are you ill?”
“Not at—ugh!—all,” he replied, in the same odd tone. “I—ah—I believe—UGH!”
He dropped his hands from his hat, and rose. His manner was slightly agitated. “I fear I may have taken a trifling—ah—cold. I should—ah—perhaps be—ah—better at home. I will—ah—say good-night.”
At the steps, he instinctively lifted his hand to remove his hat, but did not do so, and, saying “Goodnight,” again in a frigid voice, departed with visible stiffness from that house, to return no more.