certainly looked one:
thick-knit legs, sturdy ankles, a short, chunky neck, hands with a grip
like a vise, a big, good-natured dimpling mouth, eyes that were narrow
and twinkling, muscles as hard as nails, and thirteen years old, but
imagining himself eighteen. He had been christened "Albert Edward," but
fortune smiled upon him, making him the champion junior hockey player of
the county, so the royal name was discarded with glee, and henceforth he
was known far and wide as "Hock" McHenry.

The friendship between Hock and Archie was the wonder of the town. Some
people said, "Hock is so coarse and loud and slangy, I don't see how
Archie Anderson can have anything to do with him." Others said: "Archie
is so frail and sensitive, and so wrapped up in his music, how _can_
Hock find anything in him that is jolly, and boyish, and congenial?"
But Hock's people and Archie's people knew that one supplied what the
other lacked. For so often this conversation between the two boys would
be overheard. Archie's plaintive voice would say: "Oh, Hock, it is so
good to have you around; you make me forget that I can't play hockey
and football with the rest of the kids! You play it for me as well as
for yourself. I'm such a dub; laid up sick half the time."

And Hock would frequently be heard to remark: "Say, Arch, do you know
if it weren't for you I'd grow into a regular tough. You kind of keep
me straight, and--oh, well, straight and all that!"

And so the odd friendship went on, Hock attending his school daily--the
acknowledged leader of all the sports and mischief that existed; Archie
getting to school about two days out of every five, yet managing through
his hours of illness to mount week by week, month by month, up, up, up
in his music.

"I won't always be an expense at home, and have dad keep me as if I
were a girl," Archie would tell himself on his good strong days when
he felt he had accomplished something with his violin. "I can feel
the music growing right in my fingers. I feel I'll play to thousands
yet--thousands of people and thousands of dollars." Then perhaps a fit
of coughing would come on, and the boy would grow discouraged again,
but only until Hock appeared on his daily round, and plumping his
sturdy person into a chair would tell all the news, and finish with,
"Say, Arch, fiddle for a fellow, won't you?"

And while Archie played, Hock would sit quietly looking out of
the window, vowing to himself he would give up s