THE BOY'S FIRST PARTY.
The Stillman girls were going to give a party, and the boy was invited.
It was the first social recognition he had ever received, and it
disturbed his equilibrium. It also made him feel that he was almost a
man.
He had for some time longed to be a man, and for a year past had felt
hurt when called a boy. When the little note of invitation, requesting
"the pleasure of your company," etc., reached him, he felt he had
suddenly grown taller. He realized it more fully that night when he
tried on his best clothes to see how they would look. The sleeves of his
jacket were too short and his pants missed connections with his boots by
full two inches. The gap seemed to swell the size of his feet, also.
When he looked in his little mirror he noticed a plainly defined growth
of down on his lip, and his hair needed cutting.
Then the invitation filled him with mingled fear, surprise and
pleasure. He hardly knew, after thinking it all over, whether he wanted
to go or not. The one fact that turned the scale was Liddy. He was sure
she would be there. But then, that painful gap between his pants and
boots! He had thought a good deal about her ever since school was over.
Now that he was invited to a party where she would be, he began to feel
just a little afraid of her.
When the important evening came and he presented himself at the
Stillmans' house, and lifted the big iron knocker on the front door, its
clang sounded loud enough to wake the dead, and his heart was going like
a trip-hammer. Mary Stillman met him at the door, and her welcome was so
cordial he couldn't understand it. He wasn't much used to society. All
his schoolmates were there--boys that he had played ball, snared
suckers, and gone in swimming with scores of times, and girls that
seemed a good deal taller than when they went to school. Most of them
were dressed in white, and with their rosy cheeks and bright eyes made a
pretty picture.
They were nearly all in one of the big front rooms, and among them was
Liddy, in pink muslin with a broad sash, and bows of blue ribbon at the
ends of her two braids of hair. She looked so sweet he was more afraid
of her than ever. His first thought was to go into the room where some
of the boys were, but Mary Stillman almost pushed him into the other
room and he felt that he was in for it. When he sat down next to another
boy and looked at the girls whispering and giggling together, he almost
wished he had not come. Then when he thought of that unfriendly
separation of his pants and boots he was sure of it. But he caught a
pleasant smile and nod from Liddy, and that gave him a world of courage.
Then he began to talk to the boy next to him, and was just beginning to
forget that he was at a party, in an exchange of experiences about bee
hunting and finding wild honey, when the oldest Stillman girl proposed
they play button. He had never played button and wasn't anxious to, for
it might necessitate his walking about the room and expose that gap
still more. He preferred to talk bee-hunting with Jim Pratt. He was soon
made to realize, however, that there was a different sort of wild honey
to be gathered at a party, and "Button, button, who's got the button?"
was the method. When it came his turn to pay a forfeit, he was directed
to measure three yards of tape with Liddy. As this consisted in
kneeling face to face with her on a cushion in the center of the room,
joining hands, expanding arms to the limit, and back again, punctuating
each outward stretch with a kiss, it wasn't so bad. He was sorry it
wasn't six yards instead of three. He could stand it if Liddy
could--only he hoped that no one had noticed that gap. On the next
round, Jim Pratt was ordered to stand in a well four feet deep and
choose a girl to pull him out. As four feet meant four kisses, and Jim
knew a good thing when he saw it, he chose Liddy. And then the boy felt
like licking him.
After button came post office, and the boy had a letter from Nellie
Barnes, with five cents postage due, which called for his catching
Nellie and kissing her five times. By this time he had forgotten he was
at a party with abbreviated pants, and was having no end of a good time.
Then some one started the good old frolic of run 'round chimney, and as
the Stillman house was admirably adapted for that, the fun waxed fast
and furious. It was catch any girl you wanted to, and kiss her if you
did. In the romp the boy's collar came off, and he asked Liddy to pin it
on, and when she purposely pricked him a little, he grabbed her and
kissed her a few times extra, just for luck. He was rapidly realizing
why he was there, and what for. And that gap had passed entirely out of
his mind.
Then the boys, all rather warm and excited, were requested to go into
the kitchen and carry refreshments to the girls, and our boy and Liddy
were soon ensconced in a cosy corner with two plates filled with a
medley of frosted cake, mince pie, tarts and the like, and as happy as
two birds in a nest. It was the first time he had ever eaten with her,
and an event in his life of no small importance. They also talked as
fast as they ate. She told him all her little plans about going to the
village academy the next term, and what she liked to study, and all
about a little white rabbit that her father had given her on her last
birthday and how cunning it was. The boy decided at once that he would
have a white rabbit if he had to steal one. He also told her that he had
found a nest of young foxes that summer and had kept them ever since in
a pen, and he offered to give her one. He also assured her he, too,
meant to go to the academy if his parents would let him. It was a
charming visit, and the boy's heart warmed in a wonderful way, and
Liddy's blue eyes looked into his brown ones so sweetly that he felt as
if heaven was just ahead. Like a wise boy he asked her then and there if
he could go home with her, which, of course, he could, and so all was
well. Almost before any one realized it, the time for the party to break
up came, and with a chorus of "good-nights" the happy gathering ended.
When the boy, with Liddy's soft hand curled confidingly around his arm,
started for her home, a mile away, he was proud as a king, and far
happier. And that long walk in the moonlight, while
"On his arm a soft hand rested; rested light as ocean's foam,"--
could he, or would he, ever forget it? I think not. It was a poem of
blue eyes like spring violets, of tender, loving words, of mellow
moonlight on the fields where the corn-shocks stood in spectral rows,
and the brook they crossed looked like a rippling stream of silver;
where the maples along the lane, still clad in yellow foliage, cast
mottled shadows in their pathway, and the fallen leaves rustled beneath
their feet. They did not talk much--their hearts were too full of love's
young dream--although he told her of his visit to a deserted house a
year before, and how he heard ghostly footsteps in the house, and saw a
closet door swing half open in a shadowy room, and he was sure there was
a ghost in that closet; at which Liddy's arm clasped his a little
closer. Maybe he enlarged a trifle upon that spook. Almost any boy with
a fertile imagination and his sweetheart clinging to his arm, on a
moonlit maple lane, with no one near, would. I am sure I would if I were
a boy.
When her home was reached he was revolving a serious problem in his
mind. To kiss Liddy in the games at the party was easy enough. It was a
part of the play, and expected. He had even ventured a few independent
ones when she pricked him, and though he got his ears boxed, she didn't
seem angry. But to deliberately kiss her now at parting was an entirely
different matter. No doubt Liddy knew what he was thinking about, for
when the gate was reached she paused and did not enter. She thanked him
sweetly for his company home, and declared she had had a delightful
time. He assured her he had, and then there was a pause. It was a
critical moment. He looked at the moon, high overhead. The man in it--as
all men would--seemed to say: "Now's your chance, my boy; kiss her
quick!" And yet he hesitated. Then he looked at the near-by brook where
the ripples were like dancing silver coin, and then at Liddy. Maybe the
laughter of those ripples gave him courage, for he hesitated no longer,
but full upon her rosy lips he kissed her. Then he walked home, and all
the long mile, though his feet trod the earth, he knew it not. Rather
was he floating on ripples of moonlight, with a fairy-like face and
tender blue eyes ever hovering over him, and a soft white hand clinging
to his arm.
And so ended the boy's first party.