noon
His mother cried a little when she saw him marched off , and asked me to see that he was treated kindly and was n't bullied by the bigger boys , because he had been `` raised a pet . '' A number of unusual things happened in the offices that morning , and the head office boy thought Clarence might be able to explain some of them , but he had an alibi ready every time -- even when a bookkeeper found the vault filled with cigarette smoke and Clarence in it hunting for something he could n't describe . But as he was a new boy , no one was disposed to bear down on him very hard , so his cigarettes were taken away from him and he was sent back to his bench with a warning that he had used up all his explanations . Along toward noon , a big Boston customer came in with his little boy -- a nice , plump , stall-fed youngster , with black velvet pants and hair that was just a little longer than was safe in the stock-yards district . And while we were talking business , the kid wandered off to the coat-room , where the errand boys were eating lunch , which was a pretty desperate place for a boy with velvet pants on to go . -LSB- Illustration : '' _ Clarence looked to me like another of his father 's bad breaks . _ '' -RSB- As far as we could learn from Willie when he came out of his convulsions , the boys had been very polite to him and had insisted on his joining in a new game which Clarence had just invented , called playing pig-sticker .