Bettie ignored Ed, and the game went on.
"There's going to be trouble here to-night," said Milton to Shephard.
Shephard, as the ring dissolved, stepped into the middle of the room and flourished his chicken-leg as if it were a baton.

After the burst of laughter, his sonorous voice made itself heard.
"Come to supper! Everybody take his girl if he can, and if he can't--get the other feller's girl." Bill Yohe sprang toward Bettie, but Milton had touched her on the arm.
"Not t'night, Bill," he grinned.
Bill grinned in reply and made off toward another well-known belle, Ella Pratt, who accepted his escort.

Ed Blackler, with gloomy desperation, took Maud Buttles, the most depressingly plain girl in the room, an action that did not escape Bettie's eyes, and which softened her heart toward him; but she did not let him see it.
Supper was served on the desks, each couple seated in the drab-colored wooden seats as if they were at school.

A very comfortable arrangement for those who occupied the back seats, but torture to the adults who were obliged to cramp their legs inside the desk where the primer class sat on school-days.
Bettie saw with tenderness how devotedly poor Ed served Maud.

He could not have taken a better method of heaping coals of fire on her head.
Ed was entirely unconscious of her softening, however, for he could not look around from where he sat.