“I just saw Uncle Bill Peters go by,” continued Billy Cook. “I should think he’d be scared to fetch that ’ere fiddle clear across the bay here. Jeff Hackett says it’s one of the best fiddles this side er Portland. Cost seven dollars, I hear.”
Just then a crowd of boys, including Henry Burns and Harvey, Tom and Bob and the Warrens, went by the door, coming up from shore, where they had been at work on the hull of the yacht Surprise.
“Hello, Billy!” cried young Joe, spying the biggest pair of boots of which the island boasted, filling up the doorway. “Are you going up to the dance, Billy?”
“Yes, I be,” responded Billy, rather abruptly.
“Hooray!” cried young Joe. “So am I.”
“Well, I don’t know as I’m so overpowering anxious to have yer go,” asserted Billy; “at least, unless you mend your ways. You boys have got ter quit your cutting up dance nights, or there’ll be trouble.”
Young Joe grinned.
“I didn’t fill up your boots, Billy,” he said. “Honour bright, I didn’t.”
He might have added that the reason why was because somebody else thought of it first.
Billy Cook’s memory of the preceding dance was clouded by one sad incident. It seems that, by reason of his habit of going barefoot at other times except funerals and dances, and of dispensing with the conventionality of socks when he did wear boots, it was a relief to Billy to step out-of-doors, once or twice during the evening, remove the cumbersome boots, and walk about for a few moments barefoot.