"Nobody," was the calm rejoinder.
"How did you know?"
"I didn't know; I only guessed. Somehow or other, you look as if you had. Have you?"
"Yes, I have," groaned Harry, "and a sister too; but I came away and left them, and now I'm ashamed to go back."
"Well, if you're made of the right kind of stuff you'll go to work as soon as you're out of this, and fix things so you'll not be ashamed to go back," said Joel. "Between us," he went on, bending over and looking at Harry with one eye shut up tightly, "I've got a mother and sister too. I did pretty much as you did, only worse, I guess. I've been working hard to make a man of myself before I go back to them. I'm going soon too."
"To work!" exclaimed Harry, looking at the crooked figure pityingly. "What can you do?"
"Do?" repeated Joel, raising his brows, and opening wide his eyes. "Look," and he held up his long slim fingers. "I can write beautifully," he continued, with the simplicity of a child. "And I'm a clerk in a large clock and jewelry establishment. A good kind friend who came to see me at the hospital when I was so ill, secured the situation for me. And if you mean to turn about sure enough, and no going back about it, I will try and get you taken on as a salesman."
Harry was completely won by Joel's plain, straight-forward manner and hearty kindness, and gave his promise to turn over a new leaf. What is of more importance he kept the promise faithfully.
When Harry was discharged from the hospital, he looked quite different from what he did when he first entered it, or rather when he was carried there. He was worn almost to a shadow, it is true; but his sickness had taken from him the look of the outcast, and his intercourse with his new friend, and the hopes he had for the future restored to him once more the ability to look the "whole world in the face."
He was clad in a suit that had been worn by Joel ere his body was so distorted by rheumatism. It was not a perfect fit, but it was clean and neat, and gave to Harry a very presentable air.