id anything, or seemed to think
anything. When he wished to get at my boy, he simply appeared in the
neighborhood, and hung about the outside of the fence till he came out.
He did not whistle, or call "E-oo-we!" as the other fellows did, but
waited patiently to be discovered, and to be gone off with wherever my
boy listed. He never had any plans himself, and never any will but to
go in swimming; he neither hunted nor foraged; he did not even fish; and
I suppose that money could not have hired him to run races. He played
marbles, but not very well, and he did not care much for the game. The
two boys soaked themselves in the river together, and then they lay on
the sandy shore, or under some tree, and talked; but my boy could not
have talked to him about any of the things that were in his books, or
the fume of dreams they sent up in his mind. He must rather have soothed
against his soft, caressing ignorance the ache of his fantastic spirit,
and reposed his intensity of purpose in that lax and easy aimlessness.
Their friendship was not only more innocent than any other friendship my
boy had, but it was wholly innocent; they loved each other, and that was
all; and why people love one another there is never any satisfactory
telling. But this friend of his must have had great natural good in him;
and if I could find a man of the make of that boy I am sure I should
love him.

My boy's other friends wondered at his fondness for him, and it was
often made a question with him at home, if not a reproach to him; so
that in the course of time it ceased to be that comfort it had been to
him. He could not give him up, but he could not help seeing that he was
ignorant and idle, and in a fatal hour he resolved to reform him. I am
not able now to say just how he worked his friend up to the point of
coming to school, and of washing his hands and feet and face, and
putting on a new check shirt to come in. But one day he came, and my
boy, as he had planned, took him into his seat, and owned his friendship
with him before the whole school. This was not easy, for though
everybody knew how much the two were together, it was a different thing
to sit with him as if he thought him just as good as any boy, and to
help him get his lessons, and stay him mentally as well as socially. He
struggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure from
the first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came one
half-day, and then never