What passed in the ring as Bud left it, bedraggled and dusty, did not interest him. He brushed himself as he went. The band was playing madly, and the young woman in the stiff skirts was standing by her horse ready to mount. The crowd did not stop laughing; Bud inclined his head to dust his knickerbockers, and then in a tragic instant he saw what was convulsing the multitude with laughter. The outer seam of the right leg of his velveteen breeches was gone, and a brown leg was winking in and out from the flapping garment as he walked. Wildly he gathered the parted garment, and it seemed to him that he never would cover the ground between the ring and the benches. In the course of several æons—which the other boys measured by fleeting minutes—the wave of shame that covered Bud subsided. Pins bound up the wounds in his clothes. He drew a natural breath, and was able to join the mob which howled down the man who announced the concert.
After that the inexorable minutes flew by until the performance ended. In the menagerie tent Bud and his friends looked thirstily upon the cool, pink "schooners" of lemonade, and finally, when they had spent a few blissful moments with the monkeys and had enjoyed a last, long, lingering look at the elephants, they dragged themselves unwillingly away into the commonplace of sunshine and trees and blue sky. Only the romantic touch of the side-show banners and the wonder of the gilded wagons assured them that their memories of the passing hour were not empty dreams.
The boys were standing enraptured before the picture of the fat woman upon the swaying canvas. Bud had drifted away from them to glut his eyes upon the picture of the snakes writhing around the charmer. The North-enders had been following Bud at a respectful distance, waiting for the opportunity which his separation from his clan gave to them. They were enforced by a country boy of great reputed prowess in battle. Bud did not know his danger until they pounced upon him. In an instant the fight was raging. Over the guy ropes it went, under the ticket wagon, into the thick of the lemonade stands. And when Piggy and Abe and Jimmy had joined it, they trailed the track of the storm by torn hats, bruised, battle-scarred boys, and the wreckage incident to an enlivening occasion. When his comrades found Bud, the argument had narrowed down to Bud and the boy from the country, the other wranglers having dropped out for heavy repairs. The fight, which had been started to avenge ancient wrongs, particularly the wrongs of the bill-board, only added new wrongs to the list. The country boy was striking wildly, and trying to clinch his antagonist, when the town marshal—the bogie-man of all boys—stopped the fight. But of course no town marshal can come into the thick of a discussion in Boyville and know much of the merits of the question. So when the marshal of Willow Creek saw Bud Perkins putting the finishing touches of a good trouncing on a strange boy, and also saw Bill Pennington's boy, and Henry Sears's boy, and Mrs. Carpenter's boy, and old man Jones's boy dancing around in high glee at the performance, he quietly gathered in the boys he knew, and let the stranger go.
Now no boy likes to be marched down the main street of his town with the callous finger of the marshal under his shirt-band. The spectacle operates distinctly against the peace and dignity of Boyville for months thereafter. For passing youths who forget there is a morrow jibe at the culprits and thus plant the seeds of dissensions which bloom in fights. It was a sweaty, red-faced crew that the marshal dumped into Pennington's grocery with, "Here, Bill, I found your boy and these young demons fightin' down 't the circus ground, and I took 'em in charge. You 'tend to 'em, will you?"
Mr. Pennington's glance at his son showed that Piggy was unharmed. A swift survey of the others gave each, save Bud, a bill of health. But when Mr. Pennington's eyes fell on Bud, he leaned on a show-case and laughed till he shook all over; for Bud, with a rimless hat upon a towselled head, with a face scratched till it looked like a railroad map, with a torn shirt that exposed a dirty shoulder and a freckled back, with trousers so badly shattered that two hands could hardly hold them together,—as Mr. Pennington expressed it, Bud looked like a second-hand boy. The simile pleased Pennington so that he renewed his laughter, and paid no heed to the chatter of the pack clamoring to tell all in one breath, the history of the incident that had led to Bud's dilapidation. Also they were drawing gloomy pictures of the appearance of his assailants, after the custom of boys in such cases. Because his son was not involved in the calamity, Piggy's father was not moved deeply by the story of the raid of the North-enders and their downfall. So he put the young gentlemen of the Court of Boyville into the back room of his grocery store, where coal-oil and molasses barrels and hams and bacon and black shadows of many mysterious things were gathered. He gave the royal party a cheese knife and a watermelon, and bade them be merry, a bidding which set the hearts of Piggy and Abe and Jimmy and Mealy to dancing, while Bud's heart, which had been sinking lower and lower into a quagmire of dread, beat on numbly and did not join the joy. As the time for going home approached, Bud shivered in his soul at the thought of meeting Miss Morgan. Not even the watermelon revived him, and when a watermelon will not help a boy his extremity is dire. Still he laughed and chatted with apparent merriment, but he knew how hollow was his laughter and what mockery was in his cheer. When the melon was eaten business took its regular order.
"Say, Bud, how you goin' to get home?" asked Abe.
Bud grinned as he looked at his rags.