"
Here many of Penrod's little comrades were forced to clasp their
faces tightly in both hands; and his dismayed gaze, in refuge,
sought the treacherous paper in his hand.
What it beheld there was horrible.
"Proceed!" Miss Spence said.
"'I--often think,'" he faltered, "'and a-a tree-more th-thrills
my bein' when I REcall your last words to me--that last--that
last--that--'"
"GO ON!"
"'That last evening in the moonlight when you--you--you--'"
"Penrod," Miss Spence said dangerously, "you go on, and stop that
stammering."
"'You--you said you would wait for--for years to--to--to--to--"
"PENROD!"
"'To win me!'" the miserable Penrod managed to gasp. "'I should
not have pre--premitted--permitted you to speak so until we have
our--our parents' con-consent; but oh, how sweet it--'" He
exhaled a sigh of agony, and then concluded briskly, "'Yours
respectfully, Penrod Schofield.'"
But Miss Spence had at last divined something, for she knew the
Schofield family.
"Bring me that letter!" she said.
And the scarlet boy passed forward between rows of mystified but
immoderately uplifted children.
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