That curious, gigantic flower, with petals of fluttering palm leaves and pistil and stamens of pyramidal gas-jets, was still a-bloom in the darkness, and a friendly hail from beneath it arrested his steps.
"Hy're, Pete," sang out half a dozen boyish voices.
"Hev a smoke?" and a soggy stump of a cigar was extended with a grimy paw and a wide grin of invitation. This grin surrounded another stump of a cigar, which was all aglow and precariously held between the squirrel-teeth of a youngster of twelve.
"Sim Gray hes been round inquirin' after ye, Pete," added the boy. "He tole us if we seen ye ter tell ye ter wait fur him 'ere. He'll be 'long d'rec'ly."
This message obliterated for the moment Pete's recollection of his errand to the station.
"What's Sim Gray a-wantin' of me, I wonder?" he said, a trifle dubiously. For Pete, slippery and sly as he was, had often been a target for the practical jokes of a clique of bigger boys, of which Sim Gray was a prominent member. The simplicity incident to Pete's comparatively tender years was an odd contrast to the duplicity of his moral nature; and the tricky ignoramus, overreached and bamboozled, was a more amusing spectacle to these more knowing fellows than any honest "greeny" could furnish. But beyond making a fool of him they had done him no harm hitherto, and Pete was rather proud of being in request by a person of Sim Gray's inches and importance.
Pete sat down on the curbstone to wait, took the stump of cigar which had been gleaned from the dirty sidewalk, lighted it at the grinning monkey's beside him, and summoning all the strength of stomach for which boys are noted, tried hard to smoke it.
Sim Gray was one of those weak and wicked young fellows with a pocket full of money and a taste for low company, who are forever the prey of other young fellows not so weak, and yet more wicked. His father was very respectable, socially and financially, and more than once he had been obliged to strain this double respectability to the utmost to keep the name of this hopeful scion out of the police reports and the scion himself out of jail. The boy had reformed time and again. He had been sent away from home and kept under the strictest surveillance. Now, however, as he had been permitted to return, he was secretly associating with his former intimates, who sponged upon him and fleeced him as of yore, and stood ready to throw the blame upon him at the first approach of trouble. To him they seemed only lively, good-natured young fellows who knew the "ropes" and were "seeing life." The police understood them more accurately as young scamps, who had been often suspected of small crimes which generally could not be proved upon them; nevertheless more than one of the party had seen the inside of a jail. This fact reinforced Pete's hesitation to join them when Sim Gray and his friends came along, which they presently did.
Sim Gray was a spindling specimen of seventeen, with light, lank hair, big bloodshot light eyes, and a fawn-colored suit,—the coat much soiled with leaning against dirty bars.
He gave Pete a wink and a grimace as he passed, but he said nothing. It was one of the others who called out, "Come on, Pete,—we'll give ye a beer; Sim's goin' ter set 'em up."