[Penrod by Booth Tarkington]@TWC D-Link bookPenrod CHAPTER XVI THE NEW STAR 8/16
Then followed an interval when the band played in vain. About three o'clock Schofield and Williams were gloomily discussing various unpromising devices for startling the public into a renewal of interest, when another patron unexpectedly appeared and paid a cent for his admission.
News of the Big Show and Museum of Curiosities had at last penetrated the far, cold spaces of interstellar niceness, for this new patron consisted of no less than Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, escaped in a white "sailor suit" from the Manor during a period of severe maternal and tutorial preoccupation. He seated himself without parley, and the pufformance was offered for his entertainment with admirable conscientiousness.
True to the Lady Clara caste and training, Roderick's pale, fat face expressed nothing except an impervious superiority and, as he sat, cold and unimpressed upon the front bench, like a large, white lump, it must be said that he made a discouraging audience "to play to." He was not, however, unresponsive--far from it.
He offered comment very chilling to the warm grandiloquence of the orator. "That's my uncle Ethelbert's dachshund," he remarked, at the beginning of the lecture.
"You better take him back if you don't want to get arrested." And when Penrod, rather uneasily ignoring the interruption, proceeded to the exploitation of the genuine, full-blooded Indian dog, Duke, "Why don't you try to give that old dog away ?" asked Roderick. "You couldn't sell him." "My papa would buy me a lots better 'coon than that," was the information volunteered a little later, "only I wouldn't want the nasty old thing." Herman of the missing finger obtained no greater indulgence.
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