With almost no exertion he paddled himself, many yards at a stroke, to
the girls' private school where Marjorie Jones was a pupil--Marjorie
Jones of the amber curls and the golden voice! Long before the "Pageant
of the Table Round," she had offered Penrod a hundred proofs that
she considered him wholly undesirable and ineligible. At the Friday
Afternoon Dancing Class she consistently incited and led the laughter at
him whenever Professor Bartet singled him out for admonition in matters
of feet and decorum. And but yesterday she had chid him for his
slavish lack of memory in daring to offer her a greeting on the way to
Sunday-school. "Well! I expect you must forgot I told you never to speak
to me again! If I was a boy, I'd be too proud to come hanging around
people that don't speak to me, even if I WAS the Worst Boy in Town!"
So she flouted him. But now, as he floated in through the window of her
classroom and swam gently along the ceiling like an escaped toy balloon,
she fell upon her knees beside her little desk, and, lifting up her arms
toward him, cried with love and admiration:
"Oh, PENrod!"
He negligently kicked a globe from the high chandelier, and, smiling
coldly, floated out through the hall to the front steps of the school,
while Marjorie followed, imploring him to grant her one kind look.
In the street an enormous crowd had gathered, headed by Miss Spence and
a brass band; and a cheer from a hundred thousand throats shook the
very ground as Penrod swam overhead.
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