The boys
in the water swam noiselessly upstream to the roots of the elm-tree,
where he saw them looking at his disgrace. During those ten minutes
Mealy realized that his father's deepening silence portended evil; so
he tried to draw his father into a discussion of the merits of the
case by whimpering from time to time, "Well, I guess they ast me to
come," or "Piggy said it wouldn't hurt, 'cause 't ain't in dog days,"
or "I wasn't in where it was deep. I was only a-wadin'." The new boy,
who was seated upon a log near by with a stone in his hand, which he
had picked up fearing the elder Jones would join the fray, sniffed
audibly. He called to the other boys derisively, "Say, any of you boys
got the baby's blocks?" It did not lift the mantle of humiliation that
covered Mealy to hear his father reply to the new boy, "That will do
for you, sir." While Mealy wept he wiped away his tears first with one
hand and then with the other, employing the free hand in fastening
his clothes together. He did not fear the punishment that might be in
store for him. He was thinking of the agony of his next meeting with
Piggy Pennington. Mealy fancied that Abe Carpenter, who was a quiet,
philosophical boy, would not tease him, but horror seized him when he
thought of Piggy.
As Mealy fastened his last button, he felt his father's finger under
his collar, and his own feet shambling blindly over the pebbles, up
the path, into the bushes; he heard the boys in the water laugh with
the new boy, and then--stories differ.
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