“I’ll do that,” said Pewee, walking along with great dignity.
When Ben Berry and Riley saw Pewee coming in company with Jack, they were amazed and hung their heads, afraid to say anything even to each other. Jack and Pewee walked straight up to the fence-corner in which they stood.
“I thought I’d see what King Pewee would say about your fighting with babies, Riley,” said Jack.
“I want you fellows to understand,” said Pewee, “that I’m not going to have that little Lum Risdale hurt. If you want to fight, why don’t you fight somebody your own size? I don’t fight babies myself,” and here Pewee drew his head up, “and I don’t stand by any boy that does.”
Poor Riley felt the last support drop from under him. Pewee had deserted him, and he was now an orphan, unprotected in an unfriendly world!
Jack knew that the truce with so vain a fellow as Pewee could not last long, but it served its purpose for the time. And when, after school, Susan Lanham took pains to go and thank Pewee for standing up for Columbus, Pewee felt himself every inch a king, and for the time he was—if not a “reformed prize-fighter,” such as one hears of sometimes, at least an improved boy. The trouble with vain people like Pewee is, that they have no stability. They bend the way the wind blows, and for the most part the wind blows from the wrong quarter.