At this important bit of repartee, the King of Boyville so forgot his royal dignity that he let an orange-peel drive at Jimmy Sears, and pretended not to hear her.  His only reply was to joggle her arm when she reached for the cake.  Piggy was so exuberant and in such high spirits that he put his plate on his chair and made Bud Perkins walk turkey fashion three times around the room.  He forgot the disgrace which his note had brought to him in the school; he forgot the pretensions of Mealy Jones; he did not wish to forget the episode of the apple-tree, and for the time Piggy Pennington lived in a most peculiar world, made of hazel eyes and red-ribboned pig-tails, all circling around on a background of black-and-red checked flannel.

[Illustration:  At this important bit of repartee.]

After that nothing mattered very much.  It didn’t matter that Piggy’s bruised feet began to sting like fire.  It didn’t matter much if Mealy Jones’s mother did come for him with a lantern and break up the party.  It didn’t matter if Jimmy Sears did call out, “Hello, Roses Red,” when the boys reached the bed-room where their hats were; for a voice that Piggy knew cried back from the adjoining room, “You think you’re cute, don’t you, old smarty?” Nothing in the world could matter then, for had not Piggy Pennington five minutes before handed a card to his Heart’s Desire which read: 

  If I may not C U home
     may I not sit on the fence
        and C U go by?

And had not she taken it, and said merrily, “I’m going to keep this”?  What could matter after that open avowal?

And so it came to pass in a little while that the courtly company, headed by the King of Boyville, filed gayly down the path.  They walked two by two, and they started on a long, uneven way.  But the King of Boyville was full of joy—­a kind of joy so strange that wise men may not measure it; a joy so rare that even kings are proud of it.

JAMES SEARS:  A NAUGHTY PERSON

LITTLE SISTER’S LULLABY

  Zhere, zhere, ‘ittul b’o’, sistuh ’ll wock you to s’eep
  Hush-a-bye O, darlene, wock-a-bye, b’o’,
  An’ tell you the stowy about the b’ack sheep—­
  Wock-a-bye, my ’ittul b’over. 
  A boy onct said “b’ack sheep, you dot any wool?”
  “Uh-huhm,” said the lambie, “I dot free bags full.” 
  An’ where Murry went w’y the lamb’s sure to doe,
  They’s mowe of zis stowy—­I dess I don’ know;
  But hush-a-bye O, darlene, wock-a-bye b’o’,
  Wock-a-bye, my ’ittul b’over.

  O, mama says buddy tomed stwaight down from Dod;
  Hush-a-bye O, uh-huhm, wock-a-bye b’o’,
  At doctuh mans bwunged him, now is n’t zhat odd—­
  Wock-a-bye, my ’ittul b’over. 
  For papa says, “doctuhs is thiefs so zhey be.” 
  An’ thiefs tain’t det up into Heaven you see: 
  I dess w’en one comes up an’ dets sent below,
  He’s dot to bwing wif him a baby or so;
  Hush-a-bye O, uh-huhm, wock-a-bye b’o’,
  Wock-a-bye, my ’ittul b’over.