"What's the matter with you?" he asked, at length "What kind of a fellow ARE you, anyhow? Are you loony?"
Hugh pondered, the question being new to him.
"I—don't—know!" he announced, after sufficient thought.
There was a moment of silence, and black eyes and blue exchanged an ardent gaze. Hugh's eyes were bright, with the brightness of a blue lake, where the sunbeams strike deep into it, and transfuse the clear water with light; but the eyes of the strange boy twinkled and snapped, as when sunshine sparkles from ripple to ripple. He was the first to break the silence.
"Where do you go to school?" he asked. "How old are you? how far have you got in arithmetic? fractions? So am I! Hate 'em? so do I! Play base-ball?"
"No!" said Hugh.
"Isn't there a nine here?"
"Nine?" Hugh turned this over in his mind. "I only know of three at Roseholme. One is carved ivory, carved all over with dragons, and of course one could not play with that; and there are two cricket balls that the Colonel had when he was a boy, and he says I may play with those some day, when I know enough not to break windows. Perhaps you have learned that, if you are used to having nine balls."
The stranger stared again, with a look in which despair was dawning. "You must be loony!" he muttered. And then, aloud, "Can't you play anything? What can you do?"
"I can run," said Hugh, after another pause of reflection, "and swim, of course, and box a little, and fence."