Page:Penrod by Booth Tarkington (1914).djvu/95

Rh some more. I wanted to do that, but they said if he did come I mightn't be strong enough to hold him, and" The brave lad paused again, modestly. Miss Spence's expression was encouraging. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, and there may have been in them, also, the mingled beginnings of admiration and self-reproach. Penrod, warming to his work, felt safer every moment.

"And so," he continued, "I had to sit up with Aunt Clara. She had some pretty big bruises, too, and I had to"

"But why didn't they send for a doctor?" However, this question was only a flicker of dying incredulity.

"Oh, they didn't want any doctor" exclaimed the inspired realist promptly. "They don't want anybody to hear about it because Uncle John might reform—and then where'd he be if everybody knew he'd been a drunkard and whipped his wife and baby daughter?"

"Oh!" said Miss Spence.

"You see, he used to be upright as anybody," he went on explanatively. "It all begun"

"Began, Penrod."

"Yes'm. It all commenced from the first day he let those travelling men coax him into the saloon."