Most of these were much too elaborate; but one was so alluring that he dwelt upon it, working out the details with gloomy pleasure, even after he had perceived its defects. It involved some postponement--in fact, until Margaret should have become the mother of a boy about Penrod's present age. This boy would be precisely like Georgie Bassett--Penrod conceived that as inevitable--and, like Georgie, he would be his mother's idol. Penrod meant to take him to church and force him to blow his nose with an ammonia-soaked handkerchief in the presence of the Eye and all the congregation. Then Penrod intended to say to this boy, after church, “Well, that's exackly what your mother did to me, and if you don't like it, you better look out!” And the real Penrod in the sawdust box clenched his fists. “Come ahead, then!” he muttered. “You talk too much!” Whereupon, the Penrod of his dream gave Margaret's puny son a contemptuous thrashing under the eyes of his mother, who besought in vain for mercy. This plan was finally dropped, not because of any lingering nepotism within Penrod, but because his injury called for action less belated. One after another, he thought of impossible things; one after another, he thought of things merely inane and futile, for he was trying to do something beyond his power. Penrod was never brilliant, or even successful, save by inspiration. At four o'clock he came into the house, still nebulous, and as he passed the open door of the library he heard a man's voice, not his father's. “To me,” said this voice, “the finest lines in all literature are those in Tennyson's 'Maud'-- “'Had it lain for a century dead, My dust would hear her and beat, And blossom in purple and red, There somewhere around near her feet.' “I think I have quoted correctly,” continued the voice nervously, “but, at any rate, what I wished to--ah--say was that I often think of those ah--words; but I never think of them without thinking of--of--of YOU. I--ah--”