第31章 CHAPTER XI. THE TONIC(1)

These broodings helped a little; but it was a severe morning, and on his way home at noon he did not recover heart enough to practice the bullfrog's croak, the craft that Sam Williams had lately mastered to inspiring perfection. This sonorous accomplishment Penrod had determined to make his own. At once guttural and resonant, impudent yet plaintive, with a barbaric twang like the plucked string of a Congo war-fiddle, the sound had fascinated him. It is made in the throat by processes utterly impossible to describe in human words, and no alphabet as yet produced by civilized man affords the symbols to vocalize it to the ear of imagination. "Gunk" is the poor makeshift that must be employed to indicate it.

Penrod uttered one half-hearted "Gunk" as he turned in at his own gate. However, this stimulated him, and he paused to practice.

"Gunk!" he croaked. "Gunk-gunk-gunk-gunk!"

Mrs. Schofield leaned out of an open window upstairs.

"Don't do that, Penrod," she said anxiously. "Please don't do that."

"Why not?" Penrod asked, and, feeling encouraged by his progress in the new art, he continued: "Gunk--gunk-gunk! Gunk-gunk--"

"Please try not to do it," she urged pleadingly. "You CAN stop it if you try. Won't you, dear?"

But Penrod felt that he was almost upon the point of attaining a mastery equal to Sam Williams's. He had just managed to do something in his throat that he had never done before, and he felt that unless he kept on doing it at this time, his new-born facility might evade him later. "Gunk!" he croaked. "Gunk--gunk- gunk!" And he continued to croak, persevering monotonously, his expression indicating the depth of his preoccupation.

His mother looked down solicitously, murmured in a melancholy undertone, shook her head; then disappeared from the window, and, after a moment or two, opened the front door.

"Come in, dear," she said; "I've got something for you."

Penrod's look of preoccupation vanished; he brightened and ceased to croak. His mother had already given him a small leather pocketbook with a nickel in it, as a souvenir of her journey.

Evidently she had brought another gift as well, delaying its presentation until now. "I've got something for you!" These were auspicious words.

"What is it, Mamma?" he asked, and, as she smiled tenderly upon him, his gayety increased. "Yay!" he shouted. "Mamma, is it that reg'lar carpenter's tool chest I told you about?"

"No," she said. "But I'll show you, Penrod. Come on, dear."

He followed her with alacrity to the dining-room, and the bright anticipation in his eyes grew more brilliant--until she opened the door of the china-closet, simultaneously with that action announcing cheerily:

"It's something that's going to do you lots of good, Penrod."

He was instantly chilled, for experience had taught him that when predictions of this character were made, nothing pleasant need be expected. Two seconds later his last hope departed as she turned from the closet and he beheld in her hands a quart bottle containing what appeared to be a section of grassy swamp immersed in a cloudy brown liquor. He stepped back, grave suspicion in his glance.

"What IS that?" he asked, in a hard voice.

Mrs. Schofield smiled upon him. "It's nothing," she said. "That is, it's nothing you'll mind at all. It's just so you won't be so nervous."

"I'm not nervous."

"You don't think so, of course, dear," she returned, and, as she spoke, she poured some of the brown liquor into a tablespoon.

"People often can't tell when they're nervous themselves; but your Papa and I have been getting a little anxious about you, dear, and so I got this medicine for you."

"WHERE'D you get it?" he demanded.

Mrs. Schofield set the bottle down and moved toward him, insinuatingly extending the full tablespoon.

"Here, dear," she said; "just take this little spoonful, like a goo--"

"I want to know where it came from," he insisted darkly, again stepping backward.

"Where?" she echoed absently, watching to see that nothing was spilled from the spoon as she continued to move toward him. "Why, I was talking to old Mrs. Wottaw at market this morning, and she said her son Clark used to have nervous trouble, and she told me about this medicine and how to have it made at the drug store.

She told me it cured Clark, and--"

"I don't want to be cured," Penrod said, adding inconsistently, "I haven't got anything to be cured of."

"Now, dear," Mrs. Schofield began, "you don't want your papa and me to keep on worrying about--"

"I don't care whether you worry or not," the heartless boy interrupted. "I don't want to take any horrable ole medicine.

What's that grass and weeds in the bottle for?"

Mrs. Schofield looked grieved. "There isn't any grass and there aren't any weeds; those are healthful herbs."

"I bet they'll make me sick."

She sighed. "Penrod, we're trying to make you well."

"But I AM well, I tell you!"

"No, dear; your papa's been very much troubled about you. Come, Penrod; swallow this down and don't make such a fuss about it.

It's just for your own good."

And she advanced upon him again, the spoon extended toward his lips. It almost touched them, for he had retreated until his back was against the wall-paper. He could go no farther; but he evinced his unshaken repugnance by averting his face.

"What's it taste like?" he demanded.

"It's not unpleasant at all," she answered, poking the spoon at his mouth. "Mrs. Wottaw said Clark used to be very fond of it. It doesn't taste like ordinary medicine at all,' she said."

"How often I got to take it?" Penrod mumbled, as the persistent spoon sought to enter his mouth. "Just this once?"

"No, dear; three times a day."

"I won't do it!"

"Penrod!" She spoke sharply. "You swallow this down and stop making such a fuss. I can't be all day. Hurry."