at's no fair," cried the rest, and he was caught by a dozen hands.

"She didn't go round three times," he said.

"Yes, she did," cried a dozen voices.

"You shut up," he retorted, brutally, looking at Ed Blackler, who had
not spoken at all. Ed glared back, but said nothing. Bettie ignored Ed,
and the game went on.

"There's going to be trouble here to-night," said Milton to Shephard.

Shephard, as the ring dissolved, stepped into the middle of the room and
flourished his chicken-leg as if it were a baton. After the burst of
laughter, his sonorous voice made itself heard.

"Come to supper! Everybody take his girl if he can, and if he can't--get
the other feller's girl."

Bill Yohe sprang toward Bettie, but Milton had touched her on the arm.

"Not t'night, Bill," he grinned.

Bill grinned in reply and made off toward another well-known belle, Ella
Pratt, who accepted his escort. Ed Blackler, with gloomy desperation,
took Maud Buttles, the most depressingly plain girl in the room, an
action that did not escape Bettie's eyes, and which softened her heart
toward him; but she did not let him see it.

Supper was served on the desks, each couple seated in the drab-colored
wooden seats as if they were at school. A very comfortable arrangement
for those who occupied the back seats, but torture to the adults who
were obliged to cramp their legs inside the desk where the primer class
sat on school-days.

Bettie saw with tenderness how devotedly poor Ed served Maud. He could
not have taken a better method of heaping coals of fire on her head.

Ed was entirely unconscious of her softening, however, for he could not
look around from where he sat. He heard her laughing and believed she
was happy. He had not taken poor Maud for the purpose of showing his
penitence, for he had no such feeling in his heart; he was, on the
contrary, rather gloomy and reckless. He was not in a mood to show a
front of indifference.

The oysters steamed; the heels of the boys' boots thumped in wild
delight; the women bustled about; the girls giggled, and the men roared
with laughter. Everybody ate as if he and she had never tasted
oyster-soup and chicken before, and the cakes and pies went the way of
the oyster-soup like corn before a troup of winter turkeys.

Bill Yohe, by way of a joke, put some frosting down the back of Cy Hurd,
and, by way of delicate attention to Ella, alternately shoved her out of
the seat and pulled her back again, whil