"I guess you'll know better
next time," he said, in parting, to this antagonist. "You just let me
catch you around here again and I'll----" His voice sank to inarticulate
but ominous murmurings. He was in a dangerous mood.
Nearing home, however, his belligerent spirit was diverted to happier
interests by the discovery that some workmen had left a caldron of tar
in the cross-street, close by his father's stable. He tested it, but
found it inedible. Also, as a substitute for professional chewing-gum
it was unsatisfactory, being insufficiently boiled down and too thin,
though of a pleasant, lukewarm temperature. But it had an excess of one
quality--it was sticky. It was the stickiest tar Penrod had ever used
for any purposes whatsoever, and nothing upon which he wiped his hands
served to rid them of it; neither his polka-dotted shirt waist nor his
knickerbockers; neither the fence, nor even Duke, who came unthinkingly
wagging out to greet him, and retired wiser.
Nevertheless, tar is tar. Much can be done with it, no matter what its
condition; so Penrod lingered by the caldron, though from a neighbouring
yard could be heard the voices of comrades, including that of Sam
Williams. On the ground about the caldron were scattered chips and
sticks and bits of wood to the number of a great multitude. Penrod mixed
quantities of this refuse into the tar, and interested himself in
seeing how much of it he could keep moving in slow swirls upon the ebon
surface.
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