For several days after this, Penrod thought of growing up to be a monk, and engaged in good works so far as to carry some kittens (that otherwise would have been drowned) and a pair of Margaret's outworn dancing-slippers to a poor, ungrateful old man sojourning in a shed up the alley.

And although Mr.Robert Williams, after a very short interval, began to leave his guitar on the front porch again, exactly as if he thought nothing had happened, Penrod, with his younger vision of a father's mood, remained coldly distant from the Jones neighbourhood.
With his own family his manner was gentle, proud and sad, but not for long enough to frighten them.

The change came with mystifying abruptness at the end of the week.
It was Duke who brought it about.
Duke could chase a much bigger dog out of the Schofields' yard and far down the street.

This might be thought to indicate unusual valour on the part of Duke and cowardice on that of the bigger dogs whom he undoubtedly put to rout.

On the contrary, all such flights were founded in mere superstition, for dogs are even more superstitious than boys and coloured people; and the most firmly established of all dog superstitions is that any dog--be he the smallest and feeblest in the world--can whip any trespasser whatsoever.
A rat-terrier believes that on his home grounds he can whip an elephant.
It follows, of course, that a big dog, away from his own home, will run from a little dog in the little dog's neighbourhood.