The Butcher patted him on the shoulder, and then drew his arm around the little body. The Big Man put his head down and blubbered, just as though he had been a little fellow, while his companion sat perplexed, wondering what to do or say in the strange situation.
"So he's a little homesick, is he?" he said lamely.
"N-o-o," said the Great Big Man, "not just that; it's—it's all the fellows I miss."
The Butcher was silent. He, too, began to understand that feeling; only he, in his battling pride, resisted fiercely the weakness.
"You've got an uncle somewhere, haven't you, youngster?" he said gently. "Doesn't he look after you in vacation-time?"
"I don't miss him," replied the Big Man, shaking his head. Then he pulled himself together and said apologetically: "It's just being left behind that makes me such a damned cry-baby."
"Youngster," said the Butcher, sternly, "your language is at-rocious. Such words do not sound well in the mouth of a suckling of your size."
"I didn't mean to," said the Big Man, blushing.
"You must leave something to grow up for, young man," said the Butcher, profoundly. "Now tell me about that uncle of yours. I don't fancy his silhouette."
The Great Big Man, thus encouraged, poured out his lonely starved little heart, while the Butcher listened sympathetically, feeling a certain comfort in sitting with his arm around a little fellow-being. Not that he was sensible of giving much comfort; his comments, he felt, were certainly inadequate; nor did he measure in any way up to the situation.