“Fine. I want to get hold of a kid to play with this kid here. Jim sounds pretty good to me. About the same age as this one?”
“For the Lord’s sake! Jim’s eighteen and weighs two hundred pounds.”
“Cut out Jim. I thought from the way you spoke he was a regular kid. Know any one in these parts who’s got something about the same weight as this one?”
The farmer’s wife reflected.
“Kids is pretty scarce round here,” she said. “I reckon you won’t get one that I knows of. There’s that Tom Whiting, but he’s a bad boy. He ain’t been raised right.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t want to speak harm of no one, but his father used to be a low prize-fighter, and you know what they are.”
Steve nodded sympathetically.
“Regular plug-uglies,” he said. “A friend of mine used to have to mix with them quite a lot, poor fellah! He used to say they was none of them truly refined. And this kid takes after his pop, eh? Kind of scrappy kid, is that it?”
“He’s a bad boy.”