“Well, then—” Bony said. “Well, then, I'd ought to be part owner of the ring.”
So we talked it over and me and Swatty thought that would be all right, because if Bony wasn't a brother or sister of Herb or Fan he was going to have Lucy for his girl and Lucy was my sister and Fan's. So we told Bony he was third pardner in the ring.
I guess Bony felt pretty set up and proud to have a girl that Swatty had had, when he had never had any girl before. Right away he began to get mad when we said Lucy was his girl, and that's a good sign, because that's the way fellows feel.
But girls don't feel that way when they Have fellows. Right away they begin to wiggle their skirts when they walk, and want their mothers to curl their hair every day, and put fresh hair-bows on them. So they start right in saying how they hate the fellow that's their fellow; but they take slate pencils and apples and things from him when he gives them on the sly, and they begin writing notes to him in school, like “Don't you think you 're smart with your new shoes on,” and things like that. So he feels pretty good after all, and gives her apples when nobody is looking, and pushes her around mean-like when anybody does look.
But she don't mind being pushed around, because that's one way she knows he's her fellow. So, when there is a party, she is the one he drops a pillow before, and if she don't kiss him, all right for her! But mostly she does. She lets on that she hates it, but she don't. She likes it.
Well, I guess one reason Swatty was glad to get rid of Lucy was because Swatty didn't care for kissing games anyway, and it wasn't much fun for him to have a girl, because nobody hardly dared yell at him:
“Swatty! Swatty! Swatty!
Lucy she is your girl!”
He was too good a fighter. And half the fun of having a girl is getting mad because they yell it at you. And, anyway, Swatty was sort of rough to have Lucy for his girl, and she didn't like to have him for a fellow very much. As soon as school was out Swatty would begin clod fighting with the Graveyard Gang, or make a bee-line for the baseball lot, or get up a good fight. He never wanted to sort of walk on the edge of the sidewalk when the girls were walking on the middle of it, and cut up funny to make them look and giggle. It was boys he liked to push around, and not girls.
One reason Lucy didn't care much to have him for her fellow was because his father and mother were German, and none of the girls like a Dutchy for a fellow, because lots of Dutchies worked in the sawmills and couldn't talk good English. But Swatty's father didn't work in a sawmill; he was a tailor. But he was a Dutchy just the same, and when the fellows got mad at Swatty sometimes they would yell:
“Dutchy! Dutchy!
Stuffed with straw
Can't say nothing but
'Yaw! yaw! yaw!'”