LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO
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virtual rights of possession: all these were sanctioned by the timeless though unwritten Code, and seemed fit and proper for the boy to do.
But to interfere with another boy's bird-trap, to have any doings with a rival's night-line, to foregather with girls, except under the sternest compulsion, to "fobble" [1] marbles, to "tittle-tattle," to go about spick and span like a Miss Nancy, to refuse to share an apple, even in the face of impending "hog-bites" and "lady-bites," to cheat in any game of chance or test of skill—in all these the taboo of the Code was as inexorable as the law of the Medes and Persians. For, as the kindly old Doctor Ridley used to argue, the average boy is little
- ↑ "Fobble," I take it, found its root in the old verb "fob," to cheat, or trick. In fact, many a word used by Lonely and his chums, would be found not only amazingly Shakespearean, but, in a way, also startlingly indicative of the pertinacity of all boyhood tradition. Thus youthful Chamboro, with Imogen, designated an ill-favored one as a "jay," it was a more or less common practice to "mitch" from school, and when a boy "snitched" he was, of course, following in the footsteps of the old English snitcher or informer,—while the ever-familiar "cheese it" came from an argot quite as antique.
