Dick had gone to some trouble to alter an old pair of chaps so that Buddy could wear them, and his star was in the ascendant; a pair of chaps with fringes were, in Buddy's estimation, a surer pledge of friendship and favor than the privilege of feeding a lame horse.
Buddy was rather terrible, sometimes.

He had a way of standing back unnoticed, and of listening when he was believed to be engrossed in his play.

Afterward he was apt to say the things which should not be said; in other words, he was the average child of seven, living without playmates, and so forced by his environment to interest himself in the endless drama played by the grown-ups around him.

Buddy, therefore, was not unusually startling, one day at dinner, when he looked up from spatting his potato into a flat cake on his plate.
"What hill you going to climb, Ford ?" was his manner of exploding his bomb.

"Bald pinnacle?
I can climb that hill myself." "I don't know as I'm going to climb any hills at all," Ford said indulgently, accepting another helping of potato salad from Mrs.Kate.
"You told dad before he went to gran'ma's house you was going to climb a big, long hill, and he was more sure than sensible." He giggled and showed where two front teeth were missing from among their fellows.