[Illustration:  His luck was bad.]

[Illustration:  He withdrew from the game and sat alone against the barn.]

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.

Even while Piggy Pennington and Bud Perkins were sitting at dusk on the back-porch steps of the Pennington house, eating turkey-wings which Mrs. Pennington had given to them, and devouring ham sandwiches which Piggy had taken from the big platterful in the pantry, looking the hired girl boldly in the face as he did it, even then the preparations for the Pennington entertainment were progressing indoors.  The parlor, the sitting-room, and the dining-room, which had been decorated during the warm afternoon with borrowed palms and with roses from the neighbor’s vines, were being ventilated.  Windows were rising, and doors opening.  The velvety air of May was fluttering everywhere.  And there was so much life in it, that when Mrs. Pennington saw the two boys pass out of the alley gate, she saw the Perkins boy grab her son’s hat and run away whooping, while Piggy followed, throwing clods at his companion’s legs and feet.  She thought, as she turned to her turkey-slicing, that the Perkins child was not taking his father’s death “very hard.”  But she did not know that the boyish whoop was the only thing that saved him from sobbing, as he left the home where he saw such a contrast to his own.  How could a woman carrying the responsibilities of the social honor of the Methodist church in Willow Creek have time to use her second sight?