However, the statement that no
sensible person could have connected the Magsworth Bitts family with the
arsenical Rena takes no account of Penrod Schofield.
Penrod never missed a murder, a hanging or an electrocution in the
newspapers; he knew almost as much about Rena Magsworth as her jurymen
did, though they sat in a court-room two hundred miles away, and he had
it in mind--so frank he was--to ask Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, if
the murderess happened to be a relative.
The present encounter, being merely one of apathetic greeting, did not
afford the opportunity. Penrod took off his cap, and Roderick, seated
between his mother and one of his grown-up sisters, nodded sluggishly,
but neither Mrs. Magsworth Bitts nor her daughter acknowledged the
salutation of the boy in the yard. They disapproved of him as a
person of little consequence, and that little, bad. Snubbed, Penrod
thoughtfully restored his cap to his head. A boy can be cut as
effectually as a man, and this one was chilled to a low temperature. He
wondered if they despised him because they had seen a last fragment of
doughnut in his hand; then he thought that perhaps it was Duke who had
disgraced him. Duke was certainly no fashionable looking dog.
The resilient spirits of youth, however, presently revived, and
discovering a spider upon one knee and a beetle simultaneously upon the
other, Penrod forgot Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts in the course of
some experiments infringing upon the domain of Doctor Carrel.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99