If only Francey could see him
now--the defender of the oppressed. But he did not dare to think of
that. After all, he might cry.
He nodded negligently.
"All right. I don't mind."
"P'r'aps, when he knows you're standing up for me, he'll leave me
alone."
"He'd better."
"My name's Rufus--Rufus Cosgrave. You see, I was born like this, and
my father thought it would be a good joke. I call it beastly."
"Mine's Robert."
The red-haired boy meditated a little longer. He rubbed his arm
against Robert's softly like a young pony.
"I say, let's be friends--shall we?"
Robert gulped and turned his head away.
"All right. I don't mind."
They parted shyly at the corner of Cosgrave's road--a neat double file
of vastly superior villas, as Robert realized with a faint sinking of
the heart; but Robert did not go home. He made his way out to the
dingy fields behind the biscuit factory, and watched the local rag and
bobtail play football, lying hidden in the long grass under the wall so
that they should not see him and fall upon him. Even when it grew dusk
and he knew that Christine must be almost home, he still wandered about
the streets. He was hungry and footsore, his head and body ached, but
he put off the moment when he would have to face her to the very last.
He loved her, and he was not really afraid, though he knew that the
sight of his torn, blood-stained clothes would rouse her to a queer
unreasonable despair; but he had talked so much, so proudly and so
confidently of going to school.
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