But there were other evenings in the boy’s life, that were different from these at home, and one of them he will never forget.  It opened a new world to John, and set him into a great flutter.  It produced a revolution in his mind in regard to neckties; it made him wonder if greased boots were quite the thing compared with blacked boots; and he wished he had a long looking-glass, so that he could see, as he walked away from it, what was the effect of round patches on the portion of his trousers he could not see, except in a mirror; and if patches were quite stylish, even on everyday trousers.  And he began to be very much troubled about the parting of his hair, and how to find out on which side was the natural part.

The evening to which I refer was that of John’s first party.  He knew the girls at school, and he was interested in some of them with a different interest from that he took in the boys.  He never wanted to “take it out” with one of them, for an insult, in a stand-up fight, and he instinctively softened a boy’s natural rudeness when he was with them.  He would help a timid little girl to stand erect and slide; he would draw her on his sled, till his hands were stiff with cold, without a murmur; he would generously give her red apples into which he longed to set his own sharp teeth; and he would cut in two his lead-pencil for a girl, when he would not for a boy.  Had he not some of the beautiful auburn tresses of Cynthia Rudd in his skate, spruce-gum, and wintergreen box at home?  And yet the grand sentiment of life was little awakened in John.  He liked best to be with boys, and their rough play suited him better than the amusements of the shrinking, fluttering, timid, and sensitive little girls.  John had not learned then that a spider-web is stronger than a cable; or that a pretty little girl could turn him round her finger a great deal easier than a big bully of a boy could make him cry “enough.”

John had indeed been at spelling-schools, and had accomplished the feat of “going home with a girl” afterwards; and he had been growing into the habit of looking around in meeting on Sunday, and noticing how Cynthia was dressed, and not enjoying the service quite as much if Cynthia was absent as when she was present.  But there was very little sentiment in all this, and nothing whatever to make John blush at hearing her name.

But now John was invited to a regular party.  There was the invitation, in a three-cornered billet, sealed with a transparent wafer:  “Miss C. Rudd requests the pleasure of the company of,” etc., all in blue ink, and the finest kind of pin-scratching writing.  What a precious document it was to John!  It even exhaled a faint sort of perfume, whether of lavender or caraway-seed he could not tell.  He read it over a hundred times, and showed it confidentially to his favorite cousin, who had beaux of her own and had even “sat up” with them in the parlor.  And from this sympathetic cousin John got advice as to what he should wear and how he should conduct himself at the party.