Bob laughed, “You’re right, she ought to know,” he said. But he didn’t know what to say next. Hal filled in the gap.
“You go swimming a lot, and bicycling, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Bob replied. “That’s about all a fellow likes to do in summer. Don’t you swim?”
Hal’s forehead wrinkled. “My mother doesn’t like me to go swimming,” he said. “I’ve never had a bike, either. You see, my mother’s always afraid that something’ll happen to me. She hasn’t got anybody but me, you know. I haven’t got a father, or any other family. I guess that’s what makes Mother so anxious about me.”
“My mother never seems to worry very much about me,” said Bob. “At least, she never shows it.”
Hal looked at Bob enviously. “You don’t have to be worried about,” he said. “You’re as husky as they come.”
Bob felt himself getting warm. This wasn’t the way for a fellow to talk. All of his friends called each other “shrimp” or “sawed-off,” no matter how big and husky they might be. None of them ever showed such poor taste as to compliment a fellow. He guessed, and correctly, that Hal hadn’t been with boys enough to learn the proper boy code of etiquette. But he just said, “Aw, I’m not so husky,” which was the proper answer to a compliment, anyway.
“You sure are,” said Hal. “You see, I was a sickly child, and had to be taken care of all the time. I’m all right now, but my mother doesn’t seem to realize it. She still treats me as though I was about to break out with the measles any minute. I guess that’s about all I used to do when I was a kid.”
“With measles?” laughed Bob. “I thought that you could get those only once.”
“Oh, if it wasn’t measles, then something else. Anyway, here I am.”