a fight, and all Boyville goaded the King to wrath,
teased him, bantered him, and even pretended to doubt his worth.
Therefore, when Piggy Pennington, the King of Boyville, dressed for
the party that night in his Sunday clothes and his Sunday shoes and
limped down the sidewalk to the Jones's, where the boys and girls were
to meet before descending upon Bud Perkins, there was rancor in the
royal heart and maternal hair-oil on the royal head. But a strange
throb of glad pain in the pit of the royal stomach came at the thought
of the two bright eyes that would soon meet his own. The eyes made him
forget his blistering shoes, and a smile at the door divested his mind
of the serrated collar upon which his head had been pivoting for five
distracted minutes. The last thing of all to go was his pride in the
hair-oil, but it fell before a voice that said: "Well, you got here,
did you?"

[Illustration: _His cleanliness pleased his mother and she boasted of
it to the mothers of other boys_.]

That was all. But it was enough to make Piggy Pennington feel the core
of a music-box turning inside him, while outside the company saw the
King of Boyville transformed into a very red and very sweaty youth
holding madly to the back of his cuffs and chuckling deliriously. In a
daze he took off his hat, and put a sack of oranges, his part in the
evening's refreshment, on a table in the next room. When he regained
consciousness, Piggy noticed that Mealy Jones, who had pranced into
the room with much unction, was sitting next to his Heart's Desire.
The children were making merry chatter. Piggy took his place on the
end of a lounge, and turning his back to the guilty pair, gave an
"injin" pinch to Jimmy Sears, with orders to "pass it on."

Indeed, so unconcerned was Piggy in the progress of the affair behind
him that he began to shove the line of the boys on the lounge; the
shoving grew into a scuffle, and the scuffle into a wrestle, which
ended on the front porch. At length Piggy stalked through the room
where the girls were sitting, saying, when he returned with his
oranges and his hat: "Come on, fellers, everybody's here."

The boys on the porch followed Piggy's example, and in a minute or two
they stood huddled at the gate calling at the girls in the house to
hurry. When the girls were on the porch, the boys struck out, and the
two groups, a respectful distance apart, walked through the town.
Mealy Jones was enjoying the triumph of his l