"There! I guess you'll know better next time. That's the
way we do up at the Third!"
Sometimes, in solitary pantomime, he encountered more than one opponent
at a time, for numbers were apt to come upon him treacherously,
especially at a little after his rising hour, when he might be caught at
a disadvantage--perhaps standing on one leg to encase the other in his
knickerbockers. Like lightning, he would hurl the trapping garment from
him, and, ducking and pivoting, deal great sweeping blows among the
circle of sneaking devils. (That was how he broke the clock in his
bedroom.) And while these battles were occupying his attention, it was
a waste of voice to call him to breakfast, though if his mother, losing
patience, came to his room, she would find him seated on the bed pulling
at a stocking. "Well, ain't I coming fast as I CAN?"
At the table and about the house generally he was bumptious, loud with
fatuous misinformation, and assumed a domineering tone, which neither
satire nor reproof seemed able to reduce: but it was among his own
intimates that his new superiority was most outrageous. He twisted the
fingers and squeezed the necks of all the boys of the neighbourhood,
meeting their indignation with a hoarse and rasping laugh he had
acquired after short practice in the stable, where he jeered and taunted
the lawn-mower, the garden-scythe and the wheelbarrow quite out of
countenance.
Likewise he bragged to the other boys by the hour, Rupe Collins being
the chief subject of encomium--next to Penrod himself.
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