“Sure! Come up to dinner, can you?”
“All right.”
The two walked off together.
CHAPTER II
BILLY PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD
NO student of the Fifth Avenue High was more a credit to it than Sydney Bremmer. A motherless boy wholly orphaned by the great fire in San Francisco, he had lived, tramp-like, as a newsboy, till adventuring into the newer opportunities of the City of Green Hills. He had been Billy’s fellow-traveller on the steamer that brought them both from California; and his efforts to make good at each turn of his fortune’s wheel enlisted every one in his favor.
It was Mr. Streeter who, after watching the boy at Camp Going Some the summer before, advised the lad as to night-school work, helped him with his studies, and at length found a good home for him with a woman who lived alone and wished a boy for errands. Here Sydney went, studied early and late, and passed the examinations admitting him to the high school at the beginning of the winter semester. He was a general favorite with his class, and on account of his friendship with Billy and Hector, was well known to the juniors.
As the two boys walked along in the gray evening, an unusual silence fell between them, caused on Billy’s part by a rush of plans for the coming campaign. But Sydney was occupied with Billy’s personal affairs, and puzzled to know how to say certain things he feared Billy would resent.
“Lost your buzzer?” At last Billy waked to the fact that they had walked many blocks without speaking.
“No; but you won’t like my buzz.”