“Good night. And, Tom!” Tom was outside now and the door was slowly closing. “Please don’t worry about your hair!”
[CHAPTER VII]
TOM GAINS PROMOTION
That was the beginning of the friendship. Sidney, who had begun being nice to Tom to please his mother, continued being nice to him because he liked him. There was an earnest, downright quality to Tom that the older boy was attracted by. Then when Sidney found that, in spite of an inclination toward unusual seriousness in one of his age, Tom had a perfectly good, if somewhat repressed, sense of humour, Sidney took to him in earnest. The boys were quite unalike in many ways. Sidney was small-boned, lithe, graceful, and dark. Tom was heavier, less finely built, and light. Sidney was impulsive, Tom deliberate. Both were capable of deep enthusiasms, but Tom’s were of slower birth and, perhaps, of longer duration. It is not unusual for boys to form friendships for those quite opposed to them both physically and mentally. In such a partnership what one lacks the other supplies. This explains to some extent the friendship that sprang up between Sidney Morris and Tom Pollock. For a week Tom believed that when Sidney was once more off the invalid list and free to seek the companionship of his old acquaintances he would see very little of him. The reverse, however, proved to be the case.
The friendship, instead of ceasing, grew. Sidney sought Tom at the hardware store in the late afternoons, stamping in sweatered and coated with his skating boots hung from a hockey stick over his shoulder and his face flushed by the afternoon’s practice. Then he would perch himself on the edge of a counter upstairs or on a box in the packing room below and tell enthusiastically of the practice. Mr. Cummings viewed him amusedly, Mr. Wright with deep scowls. He made friends at once with Joe Gillig, and I’m not at all certain that duties weren’t neglected sometimes when the three boys got together at the back of the store. At least once a week, often twice, Sidney haled Tom home to dinner with him. At first Tom went with misgivings, but when he realised that both Mr. and Mrs. Morris were glad to have him, or anyone else that Sidney wanted, he got over his shyness and enjoyed those evenings immeasurably. After dinner they went up to Sidney’s room and talked and talked on all the thousand and one subjects dear to a boy’s heart. I think Sidney did most of the talking, however, which was to be expected since he had much more to talk about. Tom’s existence was rather hum-drum and few experiences or adventures fell to his lot those days.
In school the boys saw little of each other since they were in different classes, but notes passed between them constantly, frightfully important notes making engagements for meetings after school or at lunch hour or containing news that couldn’t possibly wait to be told verbally. Of course Sidney did not give up his other friends, but instead of spreading his friendship over a half-dozen boys as he had done before, he gave most of it to Tom. They became inseparable. As may be expected, a good deal of fun, some good-natured and some malicious, was poked at the pair. Disgruntled ones called Tom a “hayseed” and a “Rube.” This annoyed Sidney more than it did Tom, however.
“I don’t mind,” he would say calmly. “I guess that’s what I am, anyway.”
“I’d like one of them to say that to me,” said Sidney warmly. “I’d punch him!”