“Certainly I will, if you desire it;” and I clasped the offered member.
“Wolf, I have been your enemy,” said he, still retaining my hand. “I have hated you; I have used you meanly; I have despised you. Will you forgive me?”
“With all my heart, Waddie,” I replied, pressing his hand. “I never laid up anything against you.”
“Are we friends?” he asked earnestly.
“We are.”
“By the great horn spoon, Wolf, I shall stick to you now like a brother! Oh, I’m in earnest, Wolf. You needn’t smile at it!”
“I think you are sincere.”
“I know I am. It is not altogether because you got me out of a bad scrape to-day that I say all this, but because you behaved so handsomely after all my meanness toward you. I don’t understand it yet, Wolf. I don’t see how you could do it; but I know it is so, and that’s enough for me. I wish I could be like you.”
“I hope you will be better than I am,” I modestly replied.
“I don’t ask to be any better than you are. All the fellows like you—I mean all the decent fellows. My father is rich, and yours is poor; but that don’t seem to make any difference. The fellows on the other side would have mobbed Tommy Toppleton for your sake if he hadn’t broken his leg. I don’t see why they should like you so much better than Tommy. Our fellows don’t seem to like me much better, though I don’t see why they shouldn’t.”