Connecticut western news., 1915-05-13

away her husbands winter underwear
 that she perceived how hopelessly one of the elder specimens had dwind!cd, and simultaneously she received the
 inspiration which resulted in a pair of trunks for the Child Sir Lancelot and
 added an earnest bit of color. as we'll
 as a genuine touch of the middle ages. to his costume. Reversed. fore to aft
 with the greater part of the legs cut off and strips of silver braid covering the seams, this garment. she felt. was
 not traceable to its original source. When it had been placed upon Pen
 rod the stockings were attached to it 1 by a system of safety pins, not very
 pcrceptible at distance. Next. after ! being severely warned against stoop- ing, Penrod got his feet into the slip rers he wore to dancing school-"pat- rnt leather pumps," now decorated
 with large pink rosettes.
 "If can't stoop," he began smolder-
 ingly. "I'd like to know how'm I goin' to kneel in the pag"-
 You must manager This, uttered
 through pins, was evidently thought
 to be sufficient.
 They fastened some ruching about
 his slender neck. pinned ribbons at
 random all over him. and then Mar
 garet thickly powdered his hair.
 "Oh, yes; that's all right" she said,
 replying to a question put by her
 mother. '"They always powdered their
 hair in colonial times"
 Ut doesn't seem right to me-exact- ly," objected Mrs. Schofeld gently.
 sir LancelOt must have been ever so
 long before colonial times."
 "That doesn't natter" Margaret re- assured her. "Nobody1 know the difference, Mrs. Lora Rewbush least of
 about it, though, of course, she does
 write spIendidly and the words of the pageant are just beautiful. Stand
 still, Penrodr' The author of liar old Ramorez" had moved convulsively.)
 Besides. powdered hairs always be-
 coming. Look at him. You'd hardly
 know it was Penrod"'
 The pride and admiration with which
 she pronounced this undeniable truth
 might have been thought tactless, but
 Penrod, not analytical, found his spir-
 its somewhat elevated. No mirror was in his range of vision, and, though
 he had submitted to cursOry measure ments of his person week earlier. he had no previous acquaintance with the
 costume. He began to form not un-
 pleasing mental picture of his appear ance, something somewhere between the portraits of George Washington
 and a vivid memory of Miss Julia Marlowe at a matinee of Twelfth Night
 Ire was additionally cheered by a sword which had been borrowed from neighbor who was Knight of Pyth- ias. Finally there was a mantle, an old golf cape of Margarets. Fluffy
 polka dots of white cotton had been sewed to it generously; also it was or namented with a large cross of red flannel, suggested by the picture of crusader in a newspaper advertise ment. The mantle was fastened to Penrods shoulder-that is, to the shoulder of Mrs. Schofelds ex-bodice- by means of large safety pins and ar ranged to hang down behind him, touching his heels, but obscuring no-
 wise the glory of his facade. Then at last he was allowed to step before mirror.
 It was a full length glass and the i worst immediately happened. It might 1 have been a little less violent, perhaps, if Penrods expectations had not been
 so richly and poetically idealized, but i as things were the revolt was volcanic.
 Victor Hugo's account of the fight
 with, the devilfsh, in "Toilers of the Sea-" encourages a belief that, had Hugo lived and increased in power, he
 might have been equal to proper recital of the half hour which followed i Penrod's first sight of himself as the Child Sir Lancelot. But MT. Wilson 1 himself, dastard but eloquent foe of ] Harold Ramorez, could not have ex-
 pressed, with all the vile dashes at his 1 command, the sentiments which ami mated Penrods bosom when the in- 1 stantaneous and unalterable conviction i descended upon him that he was in- 1 tended by his loved ones to make pub i lie spectacle of himself in his sisters
 stockings and part of an old dress of ! his mothers.
 i To him these familiar things were
 not disguised at all. There seemed no possibility that the whole world would
 not know them at glance. The stock ] ings were worse than the bodice. He had been assured that these could not i be recognized, but, seeing them in the mirror, he was sure that no human eye could fail at first glance to detect
 the difference between himself and the former purposes of these stockings. ] Fold, wrinkle, ard void shrieked their