He feared that he had lost them forever, and was reduced to tears in consequence. But the very next day Benjamin Wade reappeared at the same hour and at the appointed trysting place, accompanied by Spike and a second small boy called Reddy.
The four squatted on the grass back of the arbours and proceeded to assiduously cultivate an acquaintance. Reddy was of an inquiring mind beyond what was natural even to a small boy meeting a strange small boy for the first time. Stephen's occupation seemed to rest heavy on him. He wanted to know what his pursuits were; and the nature of his responsibilities in life; and particularly where the authority of his elders limited his freedom.
Stephen dutifully told him of Mr. Benson and of Mrs. Pope; that it was she who sent him out into the yard to play; that he had the choice of either the front lawn or the garden, but that the barn was under a ban as being dangerous.
“You hear that, you fellows? I'd be gosh darned if I'd let her dictate to me!” said Reddy who was of a violent nature. “Does she give you anything to play with, that's what I want to know.”
Stephen was forced to confess that she did not.
“That's just like a woman! I wonder how she thinks you're going to play! I just wouldn't play, I'd learn her she couldn't boss me!”
He seemed quite incensed at the unreasonableness of the situation, and Stephen was not free from an uneasy suspicion that he regarded him as mean spirited in consequence of his quiet acceptance of it.
Then it appeared that Reddy, his name was Riley Crittendon, was the only child and despair of a widow whose straitened circumstances were sufficiently advertised by his clothes, which in no way fitted his lean active figure. Benjamin Wade explained that Reddy, like the barn, was under a ban; and that he consorted with him only at great personal risk, since his father had repeatedly threatened him with corporal chastisement if he so much as recognized his iniquitous existence.
Stephen's innocent eyes grew wide at this.
The same was true in the case of Spike. All that Benjamin Wade's father had promised Benjamin Wade, Spike's father had promised him, and Spike intimated that he was singularly capable of fulfilling each promise he had made; yet in spite of this, they both associated with Reddy indefatigably, but in the unostentatious manner favoured by back alleys.