In the afternoon she sent me over to Wills’ to borrow a little tea.  I stopped for a few minutes to play with Henry Wills—­a boy not quite a year older than I. While playing there I discovered a piece of the rind of my melon in the dooryard.  On that piece of rind I saw the cross which I had made one day with my thumb-nail.  It was intended to indicate that the melon was solely and wholly mine.  I felt a flush of anger.

“I hate you,” I said as I approached him.

“I hate you,” he answered.

“You’re a snake!” I said.

We now stood, face to face and breast to breast, like a pair of young roosters.  He gave me a shove and told me to go home.  I gave him a shove and told him I wouldn’t.  I pushed up close to him again and we glared into each other’s eyes.

Suddenly he spat in my face.  I gave him a scratch on the forehead with my finger-nails.  Then we fell upon each other and rolled on the ground and hit and scratched with feline ferocity.

Mrs. Wills ran out of the house and parted us.  Our blood was hot, and leaking through the skin of our faces a little.

“He pitched on me,” Henry explained.

I couldn’t speak.

“Go right home—­this minute—­you brat!” said Mrs. Wills in anger.  “Here’s your tea.  Don’t you ever come here again.”

I took the tea and started down the road weeping.  What a bitter day that was for me!  I dreaded to face my aunt and uncle.  Coming through the grove down by our gate I met Uncle Peabody.  With the keen eyesight of the father of the prodigal son he had seen me coming “a long way off” and shouted: 

“Well here ye be—­I was kind o’ worried, Bub.”

Then his eye caught the look of dejection in my gait and figure.  He hurried toward me.  He stopped as I came sobbing to his feet.

“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked gently, as he took the tea cup from my hand, and sat down upon his heels.

I could only fall into his arms and express myself in the grief of childhood.  He hugged me close and begged me to tell him what was the matter.

“That Wills boy stole my melon,” I said, and the words came slow with sobs.

“Oh, no he didn’t,” said Uncle Peabody.

“Yes he did.  I saw a piece o’ the rin’.”

“Well by—­” said Uncle Peabody, stopping, as usual, at the edge of the precipice.

“He’s a snake,” I added.

“And you fit and he scratched you up that way?”

“I scratched him, too.”

“Don’t you say a word about it to Aunt Deel.  Don’t ever speak o’ that miserable melon ag’in to anybody.  You scoot around to the barn, an’ I’ll be there in a minute and fix ye up.”

He went by the road with the tea and I ran around to the lane and up to the stable.  Uncle Peabody met me there in a moment and brought a pail of water and washed my face so that I felt and looked more respectable.

“If Aunt Deel asks ye about them scratches you just tell her that you and Hen had a little disagreement,” said my uncle.