Well, as soon as Herb had stood Scratch-Cat up, she turned white and fell down. She had fainted. It was a good deal of a mess-up. Miss Carter had got hysterical, and was laughing and crying so she couldn't put her hair up where it had fell down, and Scratch-Cat was stretched out fainted, and I guess Herb Schwartz was never so busy in his life before. He sent me and Bony and Swatty over to the pond-lily pond for a hatful of water, and while we were gone he hugged Miss Carter until she wasn't hysterical, because I guess that was what she needed to cure her, and then he soused Scratch-Cat with the water and she came around all right. So he took Miss Carter and Scratch-Cat back to town in the top buggy, and me and Swatty and Bony went back to our skiff and rowed home.
Swatty was pretty quiet. I guess he thought Herb and Miss Carter would tell all over town how he had been licked by a girl; but he told me and Bony he would kill us if we told it, so we didn't. But neither did Herb or Miss Carter. The reason was that Scratch-Cat told them not to tell she had been fighting. Herb told Swatty that Scratch-Cat had asked them not to.
After a while Scratch-Cat's brittle rib healed up again and she didn't have to stay in bed, and I was going down-town on an errand past her house, and I saw Swatty in her yard. They were playing mum-bledy-peg. So after that she played with me and Bony and Swatty, and pretty soon with Mamie Little and my sister and the other girls, and she was almost the one they liked best.
So one day Swatty said to me:
“Don't you ever darst yell at me that Scratch-Cat is my girl!”
“Aw! I never yelled it!” I said.
“You better not!” he said. “Because she ain't.” So then I knew she was.