The trouble occurred in this way:  On the Friday following Piggy’s black Monday, the King of Boyville, decided to resort to an heroic measure.  In his meditative moments Piggy had made up speeches addressed to his Heart’s Desire wherein he had proposed reconciliation at any sacrifice save that of honor.  Twice during those four days he had stood by his Heart’s Desire during recess, while they had looked out at the play-ground.  But the words next to his heart had sputtered and bubbled into nothing on his lips.  He could only snap chalk at the young gentlemen in the yard below him, in a preoccupied way, and listen to his Heart’s Desire rattle on about the whims of her fractions and the caprices of her spelling-lesson.  Friday noon, Winfield Hancock Pennington took a header into the Rubicon.  In the deserted school-room, just after the other youngsters had gone to dinner or to play, Piggy, with much wiggling of his toes, with much hard breathing, and with many facial contortions, wrote a note.  He gave it to the Pratt girl to deliver.  When the first bell was ringing that noon, Piggy was piling up the primary urchins in wiggling, squealing piles at “crack the whip.”  During the fifteen minutes that followed, he was charging up and down the yard, howling like a Comanche, at “pull-away.”  But run as he would, yell as he would, and wrestle as he would, Piggy could not escape the picture that rose in his mind of a boy wearing his features and using his body, writing the note that he had written.  When dismembered words and phrases from that note came to his mind on the play-ground, the quaver of terror that rose in Piggy’s whoop was not dissembled.  Sometimes fear froze his vitals, then a flush of self-abasement burned him with its flames.  And all the time he knew that the Pratt girl had that note.  He almost hoped that an earthquake would swallow her with it before she could deliver it.  When Piggy came straggling in, hot, sweaty, and puffing, just as the teacher was tapping the tardy-bell, a wave of peace swept over him.  His Heart’s Desire was not at her desk.  He knew that he had still a few moments’ reprieve.

[Illustration:  He could only snap chalk in a preoccupied way and listen to his Heart’s Desire.]

[Illustration:  Piggy was piling up the primary urchins in wiggling, squealing piles.]

They were singing when his Heart’s Desire came in.  Piggy’s head was tilted back to give his voice full volume as he shouted, “All his jewels, precious jewels, His loved and His own.”  His eyes were half closed in an ecstasy, and he did not turn his face toward the paint-brush pig-tails, nor give any sign that he knew of their owner’s presence.  Yet when she passed his desk, his voice did not quaver, nor his eyes blink, nor his countenance redden, as his foot darted out for her to trip over.  She tripped purposely, thereby accepting affection’s tribute, and he was glad.