“He did, did he?” said Hector, compressing his lips. “I shall have something to say to that,” and he quickened his steps.
CHAPTER XVI. TOSSED IN A BLANKET.
The last new boy was a little fellow only eleven years old. His name was Tommy Cooper, as he was called at home. It was his first absence from the sheltering care of his mother, and he felt lonesome in the great, dreary school building, where he was called “Cooper,” and “you little chap.” He missed the atmosphere of home, and the tenderness of his mother and sister. In fact, the poor boy was suffering from that most distressing malady, homesickness.
Had Mrs. Socrates Smith been a kind, motherly woman, she might have done much to reconcile the boy to his new home; but she was a tall, gaunt, bony woman, more masculine than feminine, not unlike Miss Sally Brass, whom all readers of Dickens will remember.
I am sorry to say that a homesick boy in a boarding school does not meet with much sympathy. Even those boys who have once experienced the same malady are half ashamed of it, and, if they remember it at all, remember it as a mark of weakness. There was but one boy who made friendly approaches to Tommy, and this was Hector Roscoe.
Hector had seen the little fellow sitting by himself with a sad face, and he had gone up to him, and asked him in a pleasant tone some questions about himself and his home.
“So you have never been away from home before, Tommy,” he said.
“No, sir,” answered the boy, timidly.
“Don’t call me sir. I am only a boy like you. Call me Hector.”