When the wagon came to the thick of the town, Bud Perkins quietly slid to the ground, and joined a group of afternoon idlers who were playing marbles on the south side of a livery barn. Here and there in the group a boy said: "H'lo, Bud," when the Perkins boy joined the coterie, but many of the youngsters, being unfamiliar with the etiquette of mourning, were silent, and played on at their game. When the opportunity came the Perkins boy put a marble in the ring without saying a word. He went back to "taws," and "lagged for goes," with the others. He spoke only when he was addressed. A black sense of desolation lowered over him, and he could not join in the ejaculations and responses of the game. His luck was bad, and he lost marble after marble. In an hour, when the sun was still in the south, he withdrew from the game and sat alone against the barn, drawing figures on the earth with a broken piece of hoop-iron. The boy could not fight off the thought of the empty home waiting for him down by the river. He saw, as he sat there, all the furniture, his father's clothes hanging at the foot of the bed, the stove in disorder; and then he realized that in the whole town not one hand was held out to him. He was a child, yet the heartlessness of it all cut him to the quick. This thought overwhelmed him, again and again, each time with more agonizing force, like an increasing wave, and as one flood washed over him with fiercer passion than the others, the boy rose hurriedly, ran around the barn, and flung himself upon a pile of hay. There he gave way to a storm of sobs. One of the group, who had been watching him more closely than the others, soon withdrew from the game, and going in the opposite direction from that taken by Bud Perkins, came tiptoeing around the haystack.
The paroxysm of sobs had ceased, and Bud was lying face downward as if asleep. He heard the step, but pretended not to hear it. He felt some one pressing the hay beside him. He knew who it was, and the two boys lay upon the hay without speaking. The Perkins boy turned his head away from the new-comer; but try as he would, Bud could not keep from sniffling. In a few moments the other boy tried to roll the Perkins boy over. It was a vain attempt. Then the sobbing began anew. But it was a short attack, and, at length, the other boy said: "Bu-ud?" Again he said, "Bu-ud?" There came no response. "O, Bud—I got somethin' to tell you!" The sniffling continued, and the other boy kept on pleading. "Ah, Bud, come on; I got somethin' real good," he said. Silence answered. The teasing went on: "Say, Bud, I won back all your marbles." That was repeated twice. Then a hand went over toward the other boy. He filled it with marbles, and it went back. Another silence was followed by a rustle of hay, and a dirty face turned over, and a voice said through a pathetic, apologetic smile: "This old nicked glassey ain't mine." The two heads nestled together, and four eyes gazed at the blue sky and the white clouds for a long time. It was the Perkins boy who spoke: "Say, Piggy, I bet you'd cry, too, if you was me."
Piggy wormed his arm under the hay around the Perkins boy's neck, as he asked, "What you goin' to do to-night, Bud?"
"I dunno. Why?" replied Bud.
"Well, I'm comin' out to stay all night. They're goin' to have a party at our house, and ma said I could."
Bud drew himself up slowly; then threw himself with a quick spring on top of Piggy, and the two began to wrestle like kittens in the hay.
