The sermon--a
noble one, searching and eloquent--was but a persistent sound in
that ear, though, now and then, Penrod's attention would be
caught by some detached portion of a sentence, when his mind
would dwell dully upon the phrases for a little while and lapse
into a torpor. At intervals his mother, without turning her head,
would whisper, "Sit up, Penrod," causing him to sigh profoundly
and move his shoulders about an inch, this mere gesture of
compliance exhausting all the energy that remained to him.
The black backs and gray heads of the elderly men in the
congregation oppressed him; they made him lethargic with a sense
of long lives of repellent dullness. But he should have been
grateful to the lady with the artificial cherries upon her hat.
His gaze lingered there, wandered away, and hopelessly returned
again and again, to be a little refreshed by the glossy scarlet
of the cluster of tiny globes. He was not so fortunate as to be
drowsy; that would have brought him some relief--and yet, after a
while, his eyes became slightly glazed; he saw dimly, and what he
saw was distorted.
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