What Ralph wanted was to make a friend of Bud.  It’s a nice thing to have the seventy-four-gun ship on your own side, and the more Hartsook admired the knotted muscles of Bud Means the more he desired to attach him to himself.  So, whenever he struck out a peculiarly brilliant passage, he anxiously watched Bud’s eye.  But the young Philistine kept his own counsel.  He listened, but said nothing, and the eyes under his shaggy brows gave no sign.  Ralph could not tell whether those eyes were deep and inscrutable or only stolid.  Perhaps a little of both.  When Monday morning came, Ralph was nervous.  He walked to school with Bud.

“I guess you’re a little skeered by what the old man said, a’n’t you?”

Ralph was about to deny it, but on reflection concluded that it was best to speak the truth.  He said that Mr. Means’s description of the school had made him feel a little down-hearted.

“What will you do with the tough boys?  You a’n’t no match for ’em.”  And Ralph felt Bud’s eyes not only measuring his muscles, but scrutinizing his countenance.  He only answered: 

“I don’t know.”

“What would you do with me, for instance?” and Bud stretched himself up as if to shake out the reserve power coiled up in his great muscles.

“I sha’n’t have any trouble with you.”

“Why, I’m the wust chap of all.  I thrashed the last master, myself.”

And again the eyes of Bud Means looked out sharply from his shadowing brows to see the effect of this speech on the slender young man.

“You won’t thrash me, though,” said Ralph.

“Pshaw!  I ’low I could whip you in an inch of your life with my left hand, and never half try,” said young Means, with a threatening sneer.

“I know that as well as you do.”

“Well, a’n’t you afraid of me, then?” and again he looked sidewise at Ralph.

“Not a bit,” said Ralph, wondering at his own courage.

They walked on in silence a minute.  Bud was turning the matter over.

“Why a’n’t you afraid of me?” he said presently.

“Because you and I are going to be friends.”

“And what about t’others?”

“I am not afraid of all the other boys put together.”

“You a’n’t!  The mischief!  How’s that?”

“Well, I’m not afraid of them because you and I are going to be friends, and you can whip all of them together.  You’ll do the fighting and I’ll do the teaching.”

The diplomatic Bud only chuckled a little at this; whether he assented to the alliance or not Ralph could not tell.

When Ralph looked round on the faces of the scholars—­the little faces full of mischief and curiosity, the big faces full of an expression which was not further removed than second-cousin from contempt—­when when young Hartsook looked into these faces, his heart palpitated with stage-fright.  There is no audience so hard to face as one of school-children, as many a man has found to his cost.  Perhaps it is that no conventional restraint can keep down their laughter when you do or say anything ridiculous.