"Where--where you goin', Penrod? You aren't goin' HOME, are you?"
"No; I'm not! What you take me for? You think I'm crazy?"
"Well, where CAN we go?"
How far Penrod's desperation actually would have led him is doubtful; but he made this statement: "I don't know where YOU'RE goin', but I'M goin' to walk straight out in the country till I come to a farmhouse and say my name's George and live there!"
"I'll do it, too," Sam whispered eagerly. "I'll say my name's Henry."
"Well, we better get started," said the executive Penrod. "We got to get away from here, anyway."
But when they came to ascend the steps leading to the "outside doors", they found that those doors had been closed and locked for the night.
"It's no use," Sam lamented, "and we can't bust 'em, cause I tried to, once before. Fanny always locks 'em about five o'clock--I forgot. We got to go up the stairway and try to sneak out through the house."
They tiptoed back, and up the inner stairs. They paused at the top, then breathlessly stepped out into a hall that was entirely dark. Sam touched Penrod's sleeve in warning and bent to listen at a door.
Immediately that door opened, revealing the bright library, where sat Penrod's mother and Sam's father.
It was Sam's mother who had opened the door. "Come into the library, boys," she said. "Mrs. Schofield is just telling us about it."
And as the two comrades moved dumbly into the lighted room, Penrod's mother rose, and, taking him by the shoulder, urged him close to the fire.
"You stand there and try to dry off a little, while I finish telling Mr. and Mrs. Williams about you and Sam," she said.
"You'd better make Sam keep near the fire, too, Mrs. Williams, because they both got wringing wet. Think of their running off just when most people would have wanted to stay! Well, I'll go on with the story, then. Della told me all about it, and what the cook next door said SHE'D seen, how they'd been trying to pull grass and leaves for the poor old thing all day--and all about the apples they carried from YOUR cellar, and getting wet and working in the rain as hard as they could--and they'd given him a loaf of bread! Shame on you, Penrod!" She paused to laugh; but there was a little moisture about her eyes, even before she laughed. "And they'd fed him on potatoes and lettuce and cabbage and turnips out of OUR cellar! And I wish you'd see the sawdust bed they made for him! Well, when I'd telephoned, and the Humane Society man got there, he said it was the most touching thing he ever knew. It seems he KNEW this horse, and had been looking for him. He said ninety-nine boys out of a hundred would have chased the poor old thing away, and he was going to see to it that this case didn't go unnoticed, because the local branch of the society gives little silver medals for special acts like this. And the last thing he said was that he was sure Penrod and Sam each would be awarded one at the meeting of the society next Thursday night."
. . . On the following Saturday a yodel sounded from the sunny sidewalk in front of the Schofields' house, and Penrod, issuing forth, beheld the familiar figure of Samuel Williams waiting.
Upon Sam's breast there glittered a round bit of silver suspended by a white ribbon from a bar of the same metal. Upon the breast of Penrod was a decoration precisely similar.
"'Lo, Penrod," said Sam. "What are you goin' to do?"
"Nothin'"
"I got mine on," said Sam.
"I have, too," said Penrod. "I wouldn't take a hunderd dollars for mine."
"I wouldn't take two hunderd for mine," said Sam.
Each glanced pleasantly at the other's medal. They faced each other without shame. Neither had the slightest sense of hypocrisy in himself or in his comrade. On the contrary!
Penrod's eyes went from Sam's medal back to his own; thence they wandered, with perhaps a little disappointment, to the lifeless street and to the empty yards and spectatorless windows of the neighbourhood. Then he looked southward toward the busy heart of the town, where multitudes were.
"Let's go down and see what time it is by the court-house-clock," said Penrod.
