He wondered if they despised him because they had seen a last fragment of doughnut in his hand; then he thought that perhaps it was Duke who had disgraced him.

Duke was certainly no fashionable looking dog.
The resilient spirits of youth, however, presently revived, and discovering a spider upon one knee and a beetle simultaneously upon the other, Penrod forgot Mrs.Roderick Magsworth Bitts in the course of some experiments infringing upon the domain of Doctor Carrel.

Penrod's efforts--with the aid of a pin--to effect a transference of living organism were unsuccessful; but he convinced himself forever that a spider cannot walk with a beetle's legs.

Della then enhanced zoological interest by depositing upon the back porch a large rat-trap from the cellar, the prison of four live rats awaiting execution.
Penrod at once took possession, retiring to the empty stable, where he installed the rats in a small wooden box with a sheet of broken window-glass--held down by a brickbat--over the top.

Thus the symptoms of their agitation, when the box was shaken or hammered upon, could be studied at leisure.