Penrod, gazing fondly upon his knife and eating cookies rapidly, answered as a matter of course, and absently, “Yes'm.”
“Certainly!” said Mrs. Crim. “Once you accept a thing about yourself as established and settled, it's all right. Nobody minds. Boys are just people, really.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Schofield cried, involuntarily.
“Yes, they are,” returned Aunt Sarah. “Only they're not quite so awful, because they haven't learned to cover themselves all over with little pretences. When Penrod grows up he'll be just the same as he is now, except that whenever he does what he wants to do he'll tell himself and other people a little story about it to make his reason for doing it seem nice and pretty and noble.”
“No, I won't!” said Penrod suddenly.
“There's one cookie left,” observed Aunt Sarah. “Are you going to eat it?”
“Well,” said her great-nephew, thoughtfully, “I guess I better.”
“Why?” asked the old lady. “Why do you guess you'd 'better'?”
“Well,” said Penrod, with a full mouth, “it might get all dried up if nobody took it, and get thrown out and wasted.”
“You're beginning finely,” Mrs. Crim remarked. “A year ago you'd have taken the cookie without the same sense of thrift.”