[Firefoot]

When Neviel came over to tell him about the game of marbles starting up, Willy jumped up happily from his seat, stuffing the remainder of his roll (that is, most of it) into his mouth and pocketing another. He wasn't too sorry to leave a few spoonfulls of soup left in his bowl.

He dug his pouch of marbles once more from his pocket and hurried over to join a couple other lads, Woody and Hanson, he was pretty sure their names were, where they had drawn a circle in the dirt and were setting up the marbles. They were shortly joined by Neviel and Reggie.

"Are we ready to start?" Willy asked. The others agreed that they were, and so the game began. He went second, after Hanson. On his turn he took out his shooter, his blue "lucky" marble. Sure enough, on his first turn he won two marbles before missing. "Too bad," he muttered, standing back to let the next lad go.