"Just so."
I was much shocked. To sleep out-of-doors seemed to me the very lowest ebb of human misery: so degrading, too—like a common tramp or vagabond, instead of a decent lad.
"John, how can you—why do you—do such a thing?"
"I'll tell you," said he, sitting down beside me in a dogged way, as if he had read my thoughts, guessed at my suspicions, and was determined to show that he feared neither—that he would use his own judgment, and follow his own will, in spite of anybody. "Look here. I get three shillings a week, which is about fivepence a day; out of that I eat threepence—I'm a big, growing lad, and it's hard to be hungry. There's twopence left to pay for lodging. I tried it once—twice—at the decentest place I could find, but—" here an expression of intolerable disgust came over the boy's face—"I don't intend to try that again. I was never used to it. Better keep my own company and the open air. Now you see."
"Oh, John!"
"Nay—there's no need to be sorry. You don't know how comfortable it is to sleep out of doors; and so nice to wake in the middle of the night and see the stars shining over your head."
"But isn't it very cold?"
"No—not often. I scoop out a snug little nest in the bark and curl up in it like a dormouse, wrapped in this rug, which one of the men gave me. Besides, every morning early I take a plunge and a swim in the stream, and that makes me warm all day."
I shivered—I who feared the touch of cold water. Yet there with all his hardships, he stood before me, the model of healthy boyhood. Alas! I envied him.
But this trying life, which he made so light of, could not go on. "What shall you do when winter comes?"