Salo’s words made a deep impression on Bruno.  He had never before realized that everyone did not have a lovely home like his, and a mother besides who was always ready to greet him affectionately, who could be told everything, could help him bear everything, who shared all his experiences and had a sympathy like no one else.  All this he had accepted as if it could not be otherwise.  Now came the realization that things might be different.  Poor Salo and his sister, for instance, had to suffer bitterly from missing what he had always enjoyed to the full without thinking about it.  He was seized with a sudden sympathy for his new friend, who looked so refined and charming, and who already had to bear such sorrow for himself and his sister.  Bruno now flung behind him all the thoughts and schemes he had had in connection with his coming fate and with all the fire of his nature he fastened on the thought of doing everything in his power to help Salo.  He wanted to further his friend’s plan to found a home for himself and his sister as soon as possible.  That was something much more important than his disinclination to DC with the Knippel boys.

“Now I shall not think about anything but what you can do to make your plan come true,” he said at the conclusion of his meditation.  “If there are two of us who are so set on finding a way we are sure to succeed somehow.”

“It seems so wonderful to me,” said Salo, quite overcome by Bruno’s warm sympathy.  “I have various friends in boarding school, but there isn’t one to whom I could have told what I am always thinking about, as I have told you.  You are so different from them.  Will you be my friend?”

Bruno firmly grasped Salo’s proffered hand and cried out with beaming eyes, “Yes, Salo, I will be your friend my whole life long.  I wish I could do you a favor, too, as you have done me.”

“But I have not done anything for you,” Salo said with surprise.

“Oh, yes, you have.  Now that I know I have a friend I have lost my dread of living with the Knippel boys.  I know that I can let them do as they please, for I’ll know that I have a friend who thinks as I do and would have the same feeling about their actions, I’ll be able to tell you everything, and you will tell me what you think.  I can let them alone and think of you.”

“Do you know, Bruno, the way I feel a real friendship ought to be?” Salo said with glowing eyes, for this had made him happy, too.  “I think it ought to be this way:  if we have to hear of anything that is ugly, mean or rough, we ought to think right away:  I have a friend who would never do such a thing.  If we hear of something though that pleases us, because it is fine, noble and great, we should think again:  My friend would do the same.  Don’t you agree with me?”

Bruno judged himself very severely, because his mother had held up his own faults to him so that he knew them very well.  He replied hesitatingly, “I wish one could always be the way one wants to be.  Would you give up trusting a friend right away if he did not act the way you expected him to?”