And the grown-ups beginning to go into the show all tell each other what the kids are getting at, and we hear them laughing to each other about it. Him and me was about the two downest-tail-and-head-hanging-est persons you ever saw. But we stayed. There wasn't no place else to go, except home, and we didn't want to go home and be asked again if there was any special reason for staying away from that particular show.
And right in the midst of all the yelling and jostling around, a kid about Freckles's size comes out of the show tent and walks over to the bunch and says:
“Now, then, what's all this yelling about Little Eva for?”
All the kids shut up, and this show kid says to Freckles:
“Was they yelling bridegroom atyou?”
Freckles, he was down, but he wasn't going to let any out-of-town boy get away with anything, either. All our own gang had him licked and disgraced, and he knew it; but this was a stranger, and so he spunked up.
“S'pose they was yelling bridegroom at me,” he says. “Ain't they got a right to yell bridegroom at me if they want to? This is a free country.”
“You won't be yelled bridegroom at if I say you won't,” says the show kid.
“I'll be yelled bridegroom at for all of you,” says Freckles. “What's it to you?”
“You won't be yelled bridegroom at about my mother,” saws the show kid.
“Who's being yelled bridegroom at about your mother?” says Freckles. “I'm being yelled at about Little Eva.”
“Well, then,” says this kid, “Little Eva is my mother, and you got to stop being yelled at about her.”
“Well, then,” says Freckles, “you just stop me being yelled at if you think you're big enough.”
“I could lick two your size,” says the show kid. “But I won't fight here. I won't fight in front of this crowd. If I was to fight here, your crowd might jump into me, too, and I would maybe have to use brass knucks, and if I was to use brass knucks, I would likely kill someone and be arrested for it. I'll fight in private like a duel, as gentlemen ought to.”
“Well, then,” says Freckles, “if any one was to use brass knucks on me, I would have to use brass knucks on them, and I won't fight any one that uses brass knucks in private.”
“Well, then,” says the show kid, “my brass knucks is in my trunk in the tent, and you don't dast to follow me and fight with bare fists.”
“My brass knucks is at home,” says Freckles, which was the first I knew he ever had any, “and I do dast.” So each one searched the other for brass knucks, and they went off together, me following. The fight was to be under the bridge over the crick down by the school-house on the edge of the woods. But when they got down there, the strip of sand by the side of the crick was in shadow. So they went on top of the bridge, to fight in the moonlight. But the moonlight was so bright they were afraid they would be seen by some farmer coming into town and maybe told on and arrested. So they sat down on the edge of the bridge with their feet hanging over and talked about where they had better fight to be private, as gentlemen should. And they got to talking of other things. And pretty soon they began to kind of like each other, and Freckles says:
“What's your name?”
“Percy,” says the show kid. “But you better not call me that. I'd fight if I was called that out of the family. Call me Spike. What's your name?”
“Well, then,” says Freckles, “1 don't like mine either; mine is Harold. But call me Freckles.”
Spike says he wished he had more freckles himself. But he don't get much chance for freckles, he says; his mother takes such awful good care of all the complexions in their family.
“Well, then,” says Freckles, “I think your mother is an awful nice lady.”
Spike, all of a sudden, bursts out crying then and says how would Freckles like it if people wrote notes tohismother and was yelled at about her? And Freckles says how wouldhelike it ifhewas the one was yelled at, and he never had any idea the lady was grown up and had a family, and he got to sniffling some himself.
“Spike,” he says, “you tell your mother I take it all back. You tell her I was in love with her till I seen her plain off the stage, and since I have seen her and her family plain, I don't care two cents for her. And I'll write her an apology for falling into love with her.”
Which he done it, then and there, in the moonlight, jabbing his fountain pen into his wart, and it read:
Dear Little Eva. Since I seen your husband and son I decided not to say anything about matrimony, and beg your pardon for it. This is wrote in my blood and sets you free to fall in love with who you please. You are older and look different from what I expected, and so let us forget bygones.
Yours truly,
H. Watson.
“Spike,” says Freckles, when they were walking back to town together, chewing licorice and pretending it was tobacco, “do you really have some brass knucks?”
“No,” says Spike. “Do you, Freckles?”
“No,” says Freckles.
And they went back to the tent together and asked the gang if they wanted any of their game, and nobody did, and the disgrace lifted.
And I felt so good about that and the end of the love-affair and everything, that right then and there I hunted up that Burning Deck dog and give him the licking of his life, which I had never been able to do before.