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 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