to go or not. The one fact that turned the scale was Liddy. He was sure
she would be there. But then, that painful gap between his pants and
boots! He had thought a good deal about her ever since school was over.
Now that he was invited to a party where she would be, he began to feel
just a little afraid of her.

When the important evening came and he presented himself at the
Stillmans' house, and lifted the big iron knocker on the front door, its
clang sounded loud enough to wake the dead, and his heart was going like
a trip-hammer. Mary Stillman met him at the door, and her welcome was so
cordial he couldn't understand it. He wasn't much used to society. All
his schoolmates were there--boys that he had played ball, snared
suckers, and gone in swimming with scores of times, and girls that
seemed a good deal taller than when they went to school. Most of them
were dressed in white, and with their rosy cheeks and bright eyes made a
pretty picture.

They were nearly all in one of the big front rooms, and among them was
Liddy, in pink muslin with a broad sash, and bows of blue ribbon at the
ends of her two braids of hair. She looked so sweet he was more afraid
of her than ever. His first thought was to go into the room where some
of the boys were, but Mary Stillman almost pushed him into the other
room and he felt that he was in for it. When he sat down next to another
boy and looked at the girls whispering and giggling together, he almost
wished he had not come. Then when he thought of that unfriendly
separation of his pants and boots he was sure of it. But he caught a
pleasant smile and nod from Liddy, and that gave him a world of courage.

Then he began to talk to the boy next to him, and was just beginning to
forget that he was at a party, in an exchange of experiences about bee
hunting and finding wild honey, when the oldest Stillman girl proposed
they play button. He had never played button and wasn't anxious to, for
it might necessitate his walking about the room and expose that gap
still more. He preferred to talk bee-hunting with Jim Pratt. He was soon
made to realize, however, that there was a different sort of wild honey
to be gathered at a party, and "Button, button, who's got the button?"
was the method. When it came his turn to pay a forfeit, he was directed
to measure three yards of tape with Liddy. As this consisted in
kneeling face to face with her on a cushion in the center of the room,
joining hands, ex