He hadn't, and so I told him the story. "But I'm not going to eat _you_," I laughed.
I had broken the ice, for a smile, a genuine joyous smile, broke slowly and then flowed in generous ripples across his face.
"You're different, aren't you?" he said presently, his brown eyes now gravely appraising me.
"I--I thought you'd come all in black with a lot of grammar books under your arms."
"I don't use 'em," I said. "I'm a boy, just like you, only I've got long trousers on. We're not going to bother about books for awhile."
He still inspected me as though he wasn't quite sure it wasn't all a mistake. And then again:
"Oh!" he sighed, though whether in relief or disappointment I couldn't say.
"But you can do sums in your head and spell hippopotamus?"
"I might," I laughed. "But I wouldn't if I didn't have to."
"I'm afraid _I_ never can," he sighed again.
I began to understand now. His mind was feminine and at least three years backward. There wasn't a mark of the boy of ten about him. But I liked his eyes. They were wide and inquiring. It wouldn't be difficult to gain his confidence.
"Are you sorry Miss Redwood is going?" I asked him.
He brightened, but said nothing for a moment, though I saw him stealing a glance at me. Whatever the object of his inspection, I seemed to have passed it creditably, for he said rather timidly:
It was the first remark that sounded as though it came from the heart of a real boy. I had won the first line of entrenchments around Jerry's reserve. When a boy asks you to see his bull pup he confers upon you at once the highest mark of his approval.
I only repeat this ingenuous and unimportant conversation to show my first impression of what seemed to me then to be a rather commonplace and colorless boy. I did not realize then how strong could be the effect of such an environment. Miss Redwood, as I soon discovered, was a timid, wilting individual, who had brought him successfully through the baby diseases and had taught him the elementary things, because that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity. She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion of a giant cracker under the cook. But all to no purpose.