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Penrod, all at once, felt sorry about something indefinable; and, with equal vagueness, he felt foolish. "Come on, Rupe," he suggested, feebly, "let Herman go, and let's us make our billies out of the rake handle." The rake handle, however, was not available, if Rupe had inclined to favour the suggestion. Verman had discarded his lath for the rake, which he was at this moment lifting in the air.
"There!" said Rupe, giving the helpless nape a final squeeze. "That's the way we do up at the Third." Penrod rubbed his neck and asked meekly: "Can you do that to any boy up at the Third?" "See here now," said Rupe, in the tone of one goaded beyond all endurance, "YOU say if I can! You better say it quick, or " "I knew you could," Penrod interposed hastily, with the pathetic semblance of a laugh.
"That's the way we do up at the Third," became staple explanation of violence, for Penrod, like Tartarin, was plastic in the hands of his own imagination, and at times convinced himself that he really was one of those dark and murderous spirits exclusively of whom "the Third" was composed according to Rupe Collins.
Much future he's got laid up for me!" The master, to whom those occasional outbreaks from Rupert were not unfamiliar, smiled, albeit with serious eyes that belied his lips, and consoled the boy as he had often done before. But he was anxious to know the cause of this recent attack and its probable relations to the fascinating Mrs. Tripp. "I thought we talked all that over some time ago, Rupe.
"I think Johnny believes what he says don't you, Johnny?" he smiled with an assumption of cheerful ease, "but I see no necessity just yet for binding Seth Davis over to keep the peace. Tell me about yourself, Rupe. I hope Uncle Ben doesn't think of changing his young tutor with his good fortune?"
"I ain't afraid of him," Sam returned, conventionally. "You are, too!" You'd be afraid to talk to him. You wouldn't get a word out of your mouth before old Rupie'd have you where you'd wished you never come around HIM, lettin' on like you was so much! YOU wouldn't run home yellin' 'Mom-muh' or nothin'! OH, no!" "Who Rupe Collins?" asked Herman.
"Was getting fifty dollars a week leading the orchestra at the Grand in Chicago, when I got sick. Don't know what it was, Rupe the doctors didn't know. Got into my ears, and that knocked me couldn't tell one note from another; so, of course, that let me out. Hard luck, Rupe, hard luck. Tough world this, Rupe.
"But how, in the name of all that is wonderful, came you to discover the danger of the pettish Baronet and his far more deserving daughter?" "I saw them from the verge of the precipice." "From the verge! umph And what possessed you dumosa pendere procul de rupe? though dumosa is not the appropriate epithet what the deil, man, tempted ye to the verge of the craig?"
The forbearance of Walker put an end to the row. Rupe, disarmed at once by the loss of his knife and the coolness of Walker, was seized by a couple of the deck-hands, and might have been secured without injury to his beauty, had not a Mississippi boatman, who owed him an old grudge, struck him on the face with a heavy iron hook, lacerating and disfiguring him hideously for life.
It could be felt that something awful was about to happen, and Penrod, as he rose from the floor, suffered an unexpected twinge of apprehension and remorse: he hoped that Rupe wouldn't REALLY hurt Herman. A sudden dislike of Rupe and Rupe's ways rose within him, as he looked at the big boy overwhelming the little darky with that ferocious scowl.
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