His mother says that is funny; it is the first time she ever heard him refuse to go to a show of any kind. And his father asks him if anything special has happened that makes him want to stay away from this particular show. I guess when his father says that, Freckles thinks his father is wise, too, so he says he has changed his mind and will go to the show after all. He didn't want to start any argument. So him and me sneaks down to the show grounds again. It is getting dark, but too early for the show, and every kid we know is hanging around outside. And what Freckles has had to stand for in the way of kidding beforehand is nothing to what comes now. For they all gets around him in a ring and shouts: “Here is the bridegroom! Here is Mr. H. Watson come to get married to Little Eva! And the wedding invitations are wrote in his own blood! His own blood! His own blood!” And the grown-ups beginning to go into the show all tell each other what the kids are getting at, and we hear them laughing to each other about it. Him and me was about the two downest-tail-and-head-hanging-est persons you ever saw. But we stayed. There wasn't no place else to go, except home, and we didn't want to go home and be asked again if there was any special reason for staying away from that particular show. And right in the midst of all the yelling and jostling around, a kid about Freckles's size comes out of the show tent and walks over to the bunch and says: “Now, then, what's all this yelling about Little Eva for?” All the kids shut up, and this show kid says to Freckles: “Was they yelling bridegroom at _you?_” Freckles, he was down, but he wasn't going to let any out-of-town boy get away with anything, either. All our own gang had him licked and disgraced, and he knew it; but this was a stranger, and so he spunked up. “S'pose they was yelling bridegroom at me,” he says. “Ain't they got a right to yell bridegroom at me if they want to? This is a free country.” “You won't be yelled bridegroom at if I say you won't,” says the show kid. “I'll be yelled bridegroom at for all of you,” says Freckles. “What's it to you?” “You won't be yelled bridegroom at about my mother,” saws the show kid. “Who's being yelled bridegroom at about your mother?” says Freckles. “I'm being yelled at about Little Eva.” “Well, then,” says this kid, “Little Eva is my mother, and you got to stop being yelled at about her.” “Well, then,” says Freckles, “you just stop me being yelled at if you think you're big enough.” “I could lick two your size,” says the show kid. “But I won't fight here. I won't fight in front of this crowd. If I was to fight here, your crowd might jump into me, too, and I would maybe have to use brass knucks, and if I was to use brass knucks, I would likely kill someone and be arrested for it. I'll fight in private like a duel, as gentlemen ought to.”