"I s'pose you are," returned Gizzard. "Everybody is. All the girls are goin', and even Biscuit Westfall!"
Sube was lost. This was the limit of human endurance. He might have stood it even if all the girls did go; but he had counted on Biscuit Westfall as the one person absolutely certain to be in his seat at school. And besides, the groundless suspicion was never wholly absent from Sube's mind that as far as Nancy Guilford was concerned, Biscuit needed watching. Then a voice came to him from the crowd almost as if the speaker had read his mind. It was unnecessarily high and nasal in quality.
"Nancy Guilford's goin'!"
Sube turned and glared into the grinning face of Dick Bissell, a tattered youth of questionable pedigree, who stood head and shoulders above the other boys, and who was no respecter of size so long as it was smaller than his. But immediately upon identifying Dick Bissell as the author of the gibe, Sube's glare melted into a sheepish grin, and he himself melted into the crowd and became as inconspicuous as possible.
He was distinctly relieved when a moment later a concerted movement towards the church began. At his side walked the faithful Gizzard, who, after they had gone a short distance, asked:
"What you so mum about?"
"Who? Me?" grunted Sube. "How you want a feller to act when he's goin' to a funeral?"
The truth was that in addition to the humiliation put upon him by Dick Bissell, Sube was feeling a little lonely in his outlawry. The other boys doing exactly what he was doing were guiltless. But he was a criminal. He alone must be on the watch for tattle-tales, must run the risk of punishment. On the whole he was in an excellent frame of mind to get the most out of a funeral.
As the company reached the church it deployed and spread itself over the spacious stone steps that reached across the front of the edifice. It was still occupying this position when Biscuit Westfall, at the side of his mother, approached and, raising his hat formally to the collective company, passed inside.
After a little interval the girls arrived and with a shy giggle or two hurried up the steps and disappeared through the massive doorway. Whereupon Dick Bissell took occasion to stroll over to Sube and suggest that if he was going to sit with the girls he'd better be going inside.