[CHAPTER VI.]
JACK SPARLING.
ABOUT a year had passed since Roger moved into his new shop, and his prosperity had known no check.
Between work, friends, books, and helping Mr. Aylmer in the evening school, his hands, head, and heart were all occupied. There was a junior class in the evening school now, composed of errand boys, crossing-sweepers, telegraph boys, and others whose days were occupied, and Roger and his friend Richard Wilson, son of Mr. Wilson, of the Post Office, taught this class turns about, thus setting Mr. Aylmer free for the elder lads.
The Wilsons were very kind to Roger, and when their eldest boy finally left school, they often asked him to their house, feeling that he was a very safe companion for their boys. Indeed, Roger had used his opportunities so well that he was now a fairly educated man; and a real desire to be kind and courteous to every one made him a well-mannered man too.
All this time, amid all his interests, Roger had not forgotten his first and best friend, Jack Sparling. He had written several times to the address Jack had given him, but his letters were returned, marked, "Gone away and left no address."
Then Roger wrote to Mr. Avery, addressing his letter to the care of Messrs. Waring & Co.; but he got no answer, though the letter did not come back. He often thought of taking a holiday and going to Birmingham in search of Jack; but he was so busy that somehow time slipped away, and this holiday never was taken.
But now something happened which at once stirred up Roger's memory of the time when he had come, hungry and friendless, to the "first cutting" of the Sandsea Railway, and opened to him a chance of hearing something of his dear old friend. The single line of rails to Sandsea was no longer sufficient for the increased traffic, and a second was to be laid down. And soon Roger heard that the contract for laying the rails was undertaken by Waring & Co., the firm in whose service Avery and Sparling had come there some years before. As soon as he knew that the work was begun,—at the Sandsea end of the line, as before,—he went down one evening to Sandsea, and set out to meet the men as they came home from work.
"How well I remember that day!" he said to himself. "It was just here that Mrs. Avery hurt herself—how the town has grown, for there were no houses here then! That sprain of poor Bess Avery's ankle was a fine piece of luck for me, though that is a heathenish way of talking of it. Why, they are collecting their tools in the very same place! There is the lorry, all just the same! Oh! I wonder, shall I have Jack by his strong hand,—such a grip,—in a few minutes? I feel as if I were in a dream, and that presently I shall wake up and find the dinner basket on my arm, and feel the queer sinking that came over me when I saw the food. It was the last time I ever was hungry—more than is pleasant. I mean."
Here he reached the scene of action. The lorry had received its load, and a good many of the men were sitting on it; but seeing a stranger, they waited to see what he wanted. There were many strange faces, one or two who might be acquaintances a little altered, but only two about whom Roger felt no doubt, and neither of these was Jack Sparling. Walking up to the stout man in white flannels, he held out his hand, saying,—