The frankest pessimism concerning Penrod permeated the whole room; even the eyes of those whose letters had not met with favour turned upon him with obvious assurance that here was every prospect of a performance that would, by comparison, lend a measure of credit to the worst preceding it. But Penrod was unaffected by the general gaze; he rose, still blinking from his lethargy, and in no true sense wholly alive. He had one idea: to read as rapidly as possible, so as to be done with the task, and he began in a high-pitched monotone, reading with a blind mind and no sense of the significance of the words. “'Dear friend,”' he declaimed. “'You call me beautiful, but I am not really beautiful, and there are times when I doubt if I am even pretty, though perhaps my hair is beautiful, and if it is true that my eyes are like blue stars in heaven--'” Simultaneously he lost his breath and there burst upon him a perception of the results to which he was being committed by this calamitous reading. And also simultaneous the outbreak of the class into cachinnations of delight, severely repressed by the perplexed but indignant Miss Spence. “Go on!” she commanded grimly, when she had restored order. “Ma'am?” he gulped, looking wretchedly upon the rosy faces all about him. “Go on with the description of yourself,” she said. “We'd like to hear some more about your eyes being like blue stars in heaven.” Here many of Penrod's little comrades were forced to clasp their faces tightly in both hands; and his dismayed gaze, in refuge, sought the treacherous paper in his hand. What it beheld there was horrible. “Proceed!” Miss Spence said. “'I--often think,'” he faltered, “'and a-a tree-more th-thrills my bein' when I REcall your last words to me--that last--that last--that--'” “GO ON!” “'That last evening in the moonlight when you--you--you--'” “Penrod,” Miss Spence said dangerously, “you go on, and stop that stammering.” “'You--you said you would wait for--for years to--to--to--to--” “PENROD!” “'To win me!'” the miserable Penrod managed to gasp. “'I should not have pre--premitted--permitted you to speak so until we have our--our parents' con-consent; but oh, how sweet it--'” He exhaled a sigh of agony, and then concluded briskly, “'Yours respectfully, Penrod Schofield.'” But Miss Spence had at last divined something, for she knew the Schofield family. “Bring me that letter!” she said. And the scarlet boy passed forward between rows of mystified but immoderately uplifted children.