Full
length and flat on his face went Roderick into the Stygian pool. The
frightful figure was Penrod.
Instantly, the pack flung themselves upon him again, and, carrying
them with him, he went over upon Roderick, who from that instant was as
active a belligerent as any there.
Thus began the Great Tar Fight, the origin of which proved, afterward,
so difficult for parents to trace, owing to the opposing accounts of
the combatants. Marjorie said Penrod began it; Penrod said Mitchy-Mitch
began it; Sam Williams said Georgie Bassett began it; Georgie and
Maurice Levy said Penrod began it; Roderick Bitts, who had not
recognized his first assailant, said Sam Williams began it.
Nobody thought of accusing the barber. But the barber did not begin it;
it was the fly on the barber's nose that began it--though, of course,
something else began the fly. Somehow, we never manage to hang the real
offender.
The end came only with the arrival of Penrod's mother, who had been
having a painful conversation by telephone with Mrs. Jones, the mother
of Marjorie, and came forth to seek an errant son. It is a mystery how
she was able to pick out her own, for by the time she got there his
voice was too hoarse to be recognizable. Mr. Schofield's version of
things was that Penrod was insane. "He's a stark, raving lunatic!"
declared the father, descending to the library from a before-dinner
interview with the outlaw, that evening. "I'd send him to military
school, but I don't believe they'd take him.
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