Wednesday was the day averaging highest in Penrod's
list of absences; but the time came when he felt that the
advantages attendant upon his Wednesday "sick headache" did not
compensate for its inconveniences.
For one thing, this illness had become so symmetrically recurrent
that even the cook felt that he was pushing it too far, and the
liveliness of her expression, when he was able to leave his couch
and take the air in the backyard at about ten o'clock, became
more disagreeable to him with each convalescence. There visibly
increased, too, about the whole household, an atmosphere of
uncongeniality and suspicion so pronounced that every successive
illness was necessarily more severe, and at last the patient felt
obliged to remain bedded until almost eleven, from time to time
giving forth pathetic little sounds eloquent of anguish
triumphing over Stoic endurance, yet lacking a certain conviction
of utterance.
Finally, his father enacted, and his mother applied, a new and
distinctly special bit of legislation, explaining it with simple
candour to the prospective beneficiary.
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