Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/35

 feverish ripping off of an all too-confining boot.

In three minutes every member of that band of adventurers sat at the roadside, bare-footed, wriggling toes, and half dreamily contemplating thin young legs, as bleached and white as grass that had grown up under a board. But a month of fishing-weather, they knew, and the right butternut-brown would be there again, and there would be no more need of gingerly picking one's way across stubble and gravel-patches!

From this mysterious rite of denudation, indeed, a sort of Dionysian madness seemed to ensue. The band went mad of a sudden; one and all they capered, galloped, yelled, curveted, with every sound and movement of ecstasy, plunging and splashing through ditches, puddling in mud-pools, skimming over velvety young grass-plots. Then the shoes and stockings were hidden, in a sadly mixed-up heap, under Smith's cow-stable, and the band took up its way toward the river. It was fishing-weather once more!

Long before they reached his street, the new boy had caught the sound of their