“Ma'am?”
“Go on and finish the lemonade; there's about glassful left. Oh, take it, take it; and don't say why! Of COURSE you're a little pig.”
Penrod laughed gratefully, his eyes fixed upon her over the rim of his uptilted glass.
“Fill yourself up uncomfortably,” said the old lady. “You're twelve years old, and you ought to be happy—if you aren't anything else. It's taken over nineteen hundred years of Christianity and some hundreds of thousands of years of other things to produce you, and there you sit!”
“Ma'am?”
“It'll be your turn to struggle and muss things up, for the betterment of posterity, soon enough,” said Aunt Sarah Crim. “Drink your lemonade!”
CHAPTER XXIX FANCHON
“Aunt Sarah's a funny old lady,” Penrod observed, on the way back to the town. “What's she want me to give papa this old sling for? Last thing she said was to be sure not to forget to give it to him. HE don't want it; and she said, herself, it ain't any good. She's older than you or papa, isn't she?”
“About fifty years older,” answered Mrs. Schofield, turning upon him a stare of perplexity. “Don't cut into the leather with your new knife, dear; the livery man might ask us to pay if——No. I wouldn't scrape the paint off, either—nor whittle your shoe with it. COULDN'T you put it up until we get home?”