“Nobody is going to hurt him,” protested Tony. “Why, Kit just now rescued him from Ducky Thornton and a crowd of little bullies.”
“That’s good,” answered Morris, “but that is only a drop in the bucket. That boy’s life will be unbearable unless he makes a friend. And I do not believe there is a boy in the school who would be his friend, really his friend,—except you.”
“His friend, Mr. Morris?...!”
“Nothing else helps you know—nothing.”
Tony grew serious. He thought of what friendship had meant to him:—Jimmie—his eyes moistened at the thought of him; Carroll; Morris, the man before him, whose deep kind gray eyes were looking at him now so confidently. “Mr. Morris,” he said at last, “you do know me, I reckon; you bank on my being clay in your hands.” Then he laughed, “What’s the brat’s name?—Pinch?”
“No, Finch, Jacob Finch.”
“Well, all right—Finch.... The dickens fly away with him. Good-night, maestro.”
“Good-night, my boy.” They clasped hands for a moment, and Tony was gone.
“I am an ass,” he said, flinging himself on the couch by the side of Kit, when he returned to Number Five. “I’ve promised Bill to be a guardian angel to that new kid.”