]

[Illustration: _Over his mother's shoulders Piggy saw the hired girl
giggle_.]

Alas for Piggy Pennington--he might affect great pride in his amours
when the hired girl teased him; he might put on a brave face and even
lure himself into the belief that this arch tormentor saw him only as
a gay deceiver; but when the lights were out, Piggy covered his head
with the bedclothes, and grew hot and cold by turns, till sleep came
and bore him away from his humiliation.

All day Saturday, before the Bud Perkins' surprise party, Piggy
Pennington and Mealy Jones were inseparable. And Piggy, who was King
of Boyville, came down from his throne and walked humbly beside Mealy,
the least of all his courtiers. In fact, since the reading of his
note Piggy had become needlessly deferential and considerate of the
feelings of his rival.

If the two entered a crowd and played "foot and a half" or "slap and
a kick" or "leap-frog," and if Mealy was "it"--and poor Mealy was
generally "it" in any game--Piggy did not jump viciously on Mealy's
wobbly back, nor did he slap hard, nor kick hard, as he would have
slapped and kicked on other days, before he descended from his throne
to dwell with the beasts of the field on that fatal Friday. Pride kept
Mealy on the rack.

Time and again his little, freckled, milky face hit the moist springy
ground as Bud or Abe or Jim bumped into him at their play. He was glad
when the day ended and he could go home. For Mealy Jones abhorred the
dirt that begrimed his face and soiled his white starched collar. He
liked to play in lukewarm water, to slosh in the suds, and to rub
his soft little hands whiter and whiter in the foam. His cleanliness
pleased his mother, and she boasted of it to the mothers of other
boys--mothers of boys with high-water marks just above their shirt
collars; of boys who had to be yanked back to the roller-towel after
washing to have their ears rubbed; of bad, bad, bad boys who washed
their feet in the dew of the grass at night and told their mothers
that they had washed them in the tub at the pump; of wicked and sinful
boys who killed toads and cried noisily when their warts bled in the
hot water; in fact, to the mothers of nearly all the boys in Boyville.
And thus it came about that Boyville having Mealy Jones set before it
as a model child, contracted a cordial hate for him, and rose against
him when he presumed to contest with Piggy for his Heart's Desire. Yet
all Boyville loved