In fact, he was treated as one who has attained a slight distinction.

At least, he owned one superlative, no matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace.

It helped him to become better known, and boys liked to be seen with him.
But one day, there was a rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom: Wesley Bender was given a desk next in front of Dora Yocum's; and within a week the whole room knew that Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his neck--the back of it, anyhow.
This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding hostilities were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as mixed-up and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign office men.

Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four other boys waylaid young Bender on the street after school, intending jocosities rather than violence, but the victim proved sensitive.

"You take your ole hands off o' me!" he said fiercely, as they began to push him about among them.
"Ole dirty Wes!" they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their changing voices.