“Will you shake hands on that?” asked Harry, extending his hand.
Teddy’s hand shot out instantly to meet Harry’s. His black eyes were gentle with friendliness. Then he said almost sheepishly, “I gotta go. I’ll see you on the same old corner to-night. If you get there first be sure and wait for me.”
The rest of the day went by uneventfully and, as agreed, the boys met after the store closed and walked part way home together. Both lads found themselves a trifle more tired than on their first day. For once Teddy had the supreme satisfaction of eating supper with his mother. Strange to relate, she had no engagement for the evening, and heard his tales of the day’s work with considerable interest. She listened closely to Teddy’s description of Harry, and his eager assertion that Harry’s mother “liked boys a lot” and had told Harry to bring him home to supper some night. Teddy could hardly believe his ears when his mother said, “Then you must invite this boy to our home to supper, too.”
After the meal they sat together in the living room, Ted reading one of the books in a favorite series of his, in which a wonderful boy hero goes through all sorts of hair-raising adventures and bobs up triumphantly at the end of the story, while his mother stitched diligently on a doyley she had begun months before and neglected to finish. Still more wonderful, when at nine o’clock he began to yawn over his book and decided to go to bed, she called him to her and kissed him good night.
After her son had gone happily to bed, Mrs. Burke began to consider him more seriously than she had done for years. She felt a little piqued over Teddy’s enthusiastic description of Harry and his mother. She wondered if she had done right in allowing Teddy to leave school and go to work, and she resolved that in future she would look after him a little more closely than she had in the past.
Meanwhile, in his own humble home, Harry was going over the day’s doings to his own mother, entirely unconscious of the blessed change his admonition to Teddy Burke to cultivate his mother’s acquaintance had wrought in two lives.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE RECRUITS TO COMPANY A
“To-day’s the day!” exclaimed Harry Harding joyfully, as he came within hailing distance of Teddy Burke, who, as usual, had arrived first at the corner on which the two boys had met every morning since they had begun their work in Martin Brothers’ Department Store.