“Cruden.”
“Well, Cruden, I’m precious glad you’ve turned up. It’ll make all the difference to me. I was getting as big a cad as any of those fellows there, for you’re bound to be sociable. But you’re a nicer sort, and it’s a good job for me, I can tell you.”
Apart from the flattery of these words, there was a touch of earnestness in the boy’s voice which struck a sympathetic chord in Reginald’s nature, and drew him mysteriously to this new hour-old acquaintance. He told him of his own hard fortunes, and by what means he had come down to his present position. Gedge listened to it all eagerly.
“Were you really captain of the fifth at your school?” said he, almost reverentially. “I say! what an awful drop this must be! You must feel as if you’d sooner be dead.”
“I do sometimes,” said Reginald.
“I know I would,” replied Gedge, solemnly, “if I was you. Was that other fellow your brother, then?”
“Yes.”
Gedge mused a bit, and then laughed quietly.
“How beautifully you two shut up Barber between you just now,” he said; “it’s the first snub he’s had since I’ve been here, and all the fellows swear by him. I say, Cruden, it’s a merciful thing for me you’ve come. I was bound to go to the dogs if I’d gone on as I was much longer.”
Reginald brightened. It pleased him just now to think any one was glad to see him, and the spontaneous way in which this boy had come under his wing won him over completely.