He himself found something to hush up when he recounted the incident to Honey in the evening. He told of meeting Mrs. Danker's niece on the ice-coated hill, and helping her down to the door. Of his sensations as she clung to him he said nothing. He said nothing of the kiss in the dark hallway. During the rest of the evening, and after he had gone to bed, he wondered why. They all hushed these things up, and he did as the rest; but what was the basic reason?
As his first emotional encounter the subject was sufficiently in his mind next day to make him duller than usual at school. On his way home from school it so preoccupied his thought that he forgot to look for the fat boy. It was the fat boy who first saw him, hailing him as he approached. There was already between them that acceptance of each other which is the first stage of friendship.
"What's your name?"
"Tom Whitelaw. What's yours?"
"Guy Ansley. How old are you?"
"Sixteen. How old are you?"
"I'm sixteen, too. What's your father do?"
"I haven't got a father. I live with—" it was difficult to explain—"with a man who kind o' takes care of me."
"A guardian?"
[Pg 199]
"Something like that. What does your father do?"
"He's a corporation lawyer. Makes big money, too." As Tom began to move along the fat boy went with him, keeping step. "What's your guardian do?"
"He does anything that'll give him a job. Mostly he's a stevedore."
"What's a stevedore? Sounds as if it had something to do with bull-fighting."
"It's a longshoreman. He loads and unloads ships."
They stopped at the corner of Pinckney Street The puffy countenance fell. Tom could follow his companion's progression of bewilderments.
"Where do you live?"
"I live in Grove Street."
It was the minute of suspense. All had been confessed. The countenance that had fallen went absolutely blank. To himself the tall, proud, sensitive lad was saying that his future life was staked on the response the fat boy chose to make. If he showed signs of wriggling out of an embarrassing situation he, Tom Whitelaw, would range himself forever with the enemies of the rich.
The fat boy spoke at last.
"So you're that kind of fellow."
"Yes, I'm that kind of fellow."
This was mere marking time. The decision was still to come. It came with an air on the fat boy's part of heroic resolution.
"Well, I don't care."
Tom breathed again, breathed with bravado. "Neither do I."
[Pg 200]
In the stress of so much big-heartedness the girlish voice became a croak. "I know guys who think that if another guy isn't rich they must treat him as so much dirt. I'm not that sort. I'm democratic. I wouldn't turn down a fellow just because he lived in Grove Street. If I liked him I'd stick to him. I'm not snobbish. How do you know you couldn't give him a peg up, and he'd be grateful to you all his life?"
Thinking this over afterward, Tom found it hard to disengage the bitter from the sweet; but he had not much chance to think it over. Any spare minute he found pre-empted by Maisie Danker, who seemed to camp in the dark hallway. If she was not there when he entered, she appeared before he could go upstairs. The ice having melted in the street, she had other needs of protection, an errand to do in the crowded region of Bowdoin Square, a shop to visit across the Common which was so wide and lonesome in winter twilights, a dance hall to locate in case they ever made up their minds to visit it. She was always timid, clinging, laughing, adorable. The embodiment of gayety, she made him gay, which was again a new sensation. Never before had he felt young as he felt young with her. The minutes they spent swamped in the throngs of the lighted streets, between five and seven on a winter's afternoon, were his first minutes of escape from a world of care. Care had been his companion since he could remember anything; and now his companion was this exquisite thing, all lightsomeness and joy.
[Pg 201]
He was later than usual in returning from school one afternoon, because a teacher had given him a commission to carry out which took some two hours of his time. As it had sent him toward the south end of the city, he had the Common to traverse on his way home. Snow had recently fallen; but through the main avenues under the trees the paths had been cleared. On the Frog Pond the drifts had been swept up, so that there could be a little skating. As Tom passed by he could hear the scraping and grinding of skates, and the hoarse shouts of hobbledehoys. At any other time he would have stopped, either to look on peacefully, or to take part in some bit of free-for-all, rough-and-tumble skylarking in the snow. But Maisie might be waiting. She might even have given up waiting, which would take all his pleasure from the afternoon.
To reach home more quickly he followed a short cut, scarcely shoveled out, on the slope of the Common below Beacon Hill. Here there were no foot passengers but himself. Neither, for some little distance, were there any trees. There was only the white shroud of the snow, freezing to a crust. A misty moon drifted through a tempest of scudding clouds, while wherever in the offing there was a group of elms the electric lights danced through their tossing branches as if they were wind-blown lanterns.
In spite of his hurry, the boy came to a standstill. It was a minute at which to fancy himself lost in Moosonee or Labrador. His voyageur guides had failed him; his dog team had run away; his pemmican—he supposed it would be pemmican—had given out. He
[Pg 202]
 was homeless, starving, abandoned, alone but for the polar bears.
It was not a polar bear that he saw come floundering down the hillside, but it might have been a black one. It was certainly black; its nature was certainly animal. It rolled and tumbled and panted and grunted, and now and then it moaned. For a few minutes it remained stationary, with internal undulations; then it scrambled a few paces, as an elephant might scramble whose feet had been sawn off. A dying mammoth would also have emitted just these raucous groans.
Suddenly it squealed. The squeal was like that of a pig when the knife is thrust into its throat. It was girlish, piercing, and yet had a masculine shriek in it. Tom Whitelaw knew what was happening. It had happened to himself so often in the days when he was different from other boys that his fists seemed to clench and his feet to spring before his mind had given the command. In clearing the fifty odd yards of snow between him and the wallowing monster, he chose a form of words which young hooligans would understand as those of authority.
"What in hell are yez doin' to that kid? Are yez puttin' a knife in him? Leave him be, or I'll knock the brains out of every one of yez."
He was in among them, laying about him before they knew what had landed in their midst. They were not brutal youngsters; they were only jocose in the manner of their kind. Having spied the fat boy coming down to watch the skating, it was as natural for them to jump on him as it would be for a pack of
[Pg 203]
 dogs who chanced to see a sloth. With the courage of the mob, and also with its rapidity of thought-transfer, they had closed in silently and rushed him. He was on his back in a second. In a second they were clambering all over him. When he staggered to his feet they let him run, only to catch him and pull him down again. So staggering, so running, so coming down like a lump of jelly in the snow, he had reached the top of the hill, his tormentors hanging to him as if their teeth were in his flesh, at the minute when Tom first perceived the black mass.
The fat boy had not lacked courage. He had fought. That is, he had kicked and bitten and scratched, with the fury of vicious helplessness. He had not cried for mercy. He had not cried out at all. He had struggled for breath; he had nearly strangled; but his pantings and gruntings were only for breath just as............