His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's Pet
would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty! If _that_ happened, well,
nobody _could_ stand her! The long lashes made her eyes shadowy, and it
was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to insist upon notoriety; you
couldn't tell where they were at all, any more. Her back seemed to be
just a regular back, not made up of a lot of implements like shoulder
blades and things.

A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be the
most untidy boy in the class and had never shown any remorse for his
reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to dispute
it. He was content: it failed to lower his standing with his fellows
or to impress them unfavourably. In fact, he was treated as one who has
attained a slight distinction. At least, he owned one superlative, no
matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace. It
helped him to become better known, and boys liked to be seen with him.
But one day, there was a rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom:
Wesley Bender was given a desk next in front of Dora Yocum's; and within
a week the whole room knew that Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his
neck--the back of it, anyhow.

This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley
Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding hostilities
were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as mixed-up
and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign
office men. Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four other boys waylaid young
Bender on the street after school, intending jocosities rather than
violence, but the victim proved sensitive. "You take your ole hands off
o' me!" he said fiercely, as they began to push him about among them.