I remember that Mr. Wright kissed me and said: 

“Hello!  Here’s my boy in a new pair o’ trousers!”

“Put yer hand in there,” I said proudly, as I took my own out of one of my pockets, and pointed the way.

He did not accept the invitation, but laughed heartily and gave me a little hug.

When we went out of the church there stood Mr. and Mrs. Horace Dunkelberg, and Sally and some other children.  It was a tragic moment for me when Sally laughed and ran behind her mother.  Still worse was it when a couple of boys ran away crying, “Look at the breeches!”

I looked down at my breeches and wondered what was wrong with them.  They seemed very splendid to me and yet I saw at once that they were not popular.  I went close to my Aunt Deel and partly hid myself in her cloak.  I heard Mrs. Dunkelberg say: 

“Of course you’ll come to dinner with us?”

For a second my hopes leaped high.  I was hungry and visions of jelly cake and preserves rose before me.  Of course there were the trousers, but perhaps Sally would get used to the trousers and ask me to play with her.

“Thank ye, but we’ve got a good ways to go and we fetched a bite with us—­ayes!” said Aunt Deel.

Eagerly I awaited an invitation from the great Mrs. Dunkelberg that should be decisively urgent, but she only said: 

“I’m very sorry you can’t stay.”

My hopes fell like bricks and vanished like bubbles.

The Dunkelbergs left us with pleasant words.  They had asked me to shake hands with Sally, but I had clung to my aunt’s cloak and firmly refused to make any advances.  Slowly and without a word we walked across the park toward the tavern sheds.  Hot tears were flowing down my cheeks—­silent tears! for I did not wish to explain them.  Furtively I brushed them away with my hand.  The odor of frying beef steak came out of the open doors of the tavern.  It was more than I could stand.  I hadn’t tasted fresh meat since Uncle Peabody had killed a deer in midsummer.  He gave me a look of understanding, but said nothing for a minute.  Then he proposed: 

“Mebbe we better git dinner here?”

Aunt Deel hesitated at the edge of the stable yard, surrounded as she was by the aroma of the fleshpots, then: 

“I guess we better go right home and save our money, Peabody—­ayes!” said she.  “We told Mr. and Mrs. Horace Dunkelberg that we was goin’ home and they’d think we was liars.”

“We orto have gone with `em,” said Uncle Peabody as he unhitched the horses.

“Well, Peabody Baynes, they didn’t appear to be very anxious to have us,” Aunt Deel answered with a sigh.

We had started away up the South road when, to my surprise, Aunt Deel mildly attacked the Dunkelbergs.

“These here village folks like to be waited on—­ayes!—­an’ they’re awful anxious you should come to see ’em when ye can’t—­ayes!—­but when ye git to the village they ain’t nigh so anxious—­no they ain’t!”