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LONELY O'MALLEY

blow with joy, and jumped in for more, half crooning and half wailing as he fought.

It was a fight the like of which had never been witnessed in all Chamboro before.^[1] It went down in the annals of the town, along with the drowning accidents, and the big fire, and the wrecking of the Minnie Steiner on the bridge abutment.

It lasted until the gasping and still astounded Piggie Brennan found himself with only one eye to see out of, with a loose tooth and a grotesquely swollen lip, with a sore body and a swimming head, held determinedly down in the street-dust while a shrill and altogether insane young voice cried over him,—

↑ That our poor hero had, alas, a taint of venality in his veins is further borne out by the family tradition of a fight of his, years before, with an aggressive and overbearing country cousin, who, indeed, pommelled Lonely unmercifully. The defeated one, however, on being offered twenty-five cents and half a watermelon by a purposeful maiden aunt, returned to the fray, as in the Piggie Brennan encounter, and soundly and unexpectedly trounced the bully. The only thing Lonely remembered, or cared to remember, about it, was that he ate the half-watermelon, and strutted around the rest of the morning with the shell of it on his head.

[1] That our poor hero had, alas, a taint of venality in his veins is further borne out by the family tradition of a fight of his, years before, with an aggressive and overbearing country cousin, who, indeed, pommelled Lonely unmercifully. The defeated one, however, on being offered twenty-five cents and half a watermelon by a purposeful maiden aunt, returned to the fray, as in the Piggie Brennan encounter, and soundly and unexpectedly trounced the bully. The only thing Lonely remembered, or cared to remember, about it, was that he ate the half-watermelon, and strutted around the rest of the morning with the shell of it on his head.

[1]