‘Damn it man, are you going just to stand and watch? — Sonny yelling for help, but I was immobilized, how could I take sides between my sister and my best friend, and he, ‘I’ll tell my daddy on you!’, tearful now, while the Monkey, ‘That’ll teach you to talk shit — and that’ll teach you’, his shoes, off; no shirt any more; his vest, dragged off by a high-board diver, ‘And that’ll teach you to write your sissy love letters’, no socks now, and plenty of tears, and ‘There!’ yelled the Monkey; the Walsingham bus arrived and the assailants and my sister jumped in and sped away, ‘Ta-ta-ba-ta, lover-boy!’ they yelled, and Sonny was left in the street, on the pavement opposite Chimalker’s and Reader’s Paradise, naked as the day he was born; his forcep-hollows glistened like rock-pools, because Vaseline had dripped into them from his hair; and his eyes were wet as well, as he, ‘Why’s she do it man?