cus band outside of the tent came to Miss Morgan's ears on gusts
of wind, and died away as the wind ebbed. She dropped the dish-cloth
three times in five minutes, and washed her cup and saucer twice. She
struggled bravely in the Slough of Despond for awhile, and then turned
back with Pliable.

"Henry," she said, as the boy walked past her carrying peppergrass to
the bird, "Henry, what made you act so last night?"

The boy dropped his head and answered: "I dunno."

"But, Henry, didn't you know it was wrong?"

"I dunno."

"Why did you stick that little boy with the pin?"

"Well--well--" he gasped, preparing for a defence. "Well--he pinched
me first."

"Yes, Henry, but don't you know that it's wrong to do those things in
church? Don't you see how bad it was?"

"I was just a-playin', Miss Morgan; I didn't mean to."

Bud did not dare to trust his instinctive reading of the signs. He
went on impulsively: "I wanted him to quit, but he just kept right on,
and Brother Baker didn't touch him."

The wind brought the staccato music of the circus band to the
foster-mother's ears. The music completed her moral decay, for she was
thinking, if Brother Baker would only look after his own children as
carefully as he looked after those of other people, the world would
be better. Then she said: "Now, Henry, if I let you go, just this
once--now just this once, mind you--will you promise never to do
anything like that again?"

Blackness dropped from the boy's spirit, and by main strength he
strangled a desire to yell. The desire revived when he reached the
alley, and he ran whooping to the circus grounds.

There is a law of crystallization among boys which enables molecules
of the same gang to meet in whatever agglomeration they may be thrown.
So ten minutes after Bud Perkins left home he found Piggy and Jimmy
and old Abe and Mealy in the menagerie tent. Whereupon the South End
was able to present a bristling front to the North End--a front which
even the pleasings of the lute in the circus band could not break. But
the boys knew that the band playing in the circus tent meant that
the performance in the ring was about to begin. So they cut short
an interesting dialogue with a keeper, concerning the elephant that
remembered the man who gave her tobacco ten years ago, and tried to
kill him the week before the show came to Willow Creek. But when the
pageant in the ring unfolded its tinselled splendor in the Grand
Entry, Bud Perk