"Roy's friend,
"DUDLEY."
"I don't think you've finished your letter properly," observed Roy, critically, as Dudley concluded reading his. "Why do you write you're my friend?"
"Because I am," was the prompt reply; "I'm not Rob's friend and I shan't tell him I am. I just write to him because you do, that's all."
"Don't you like him?"
"I don't want him for my friend; he's going to be a kind of servant. Besides I wanted him to remember that I was your friend. I knew you long before he did, and if he was dead now, or if he never had been born, I should have been your friend just the same. We could have got on all right without him."
This was not the first touch of jealousy that had appeared in Dudley's character. He had more than once quarrelled with Roy on account of the boy who he said had crept in between them, but on Roy always emphatically assuring him that Rob occupied a back place in his affections, Dudley would generally be appeased and become his sunny self again.
"I like Rob very much," said Roy, slowly, "'specially now he's a soldier. I was thinking in church last Sunday, when they were reading about David and Jonathan, that Jonathan had an armor-bearer. That's Rob. Only I can't go to battle, so I send him. Don't you think that's a nice idea?"
"Did he get killed?" asked Dudley, with interest; "I forget about him."
"It doesn't say—I expect he lived as long as Jonathan did, and then perhaps David took him to be his servant. That's what I've settled with Rob, that he shall be your servant if I die."