John Dean—for that was the stranger’s name—looked down the narrow, dirty, ill-smelling street, with its crowds of surging humanity, down the dingy rows of tenement houses with their crying children and their scolding mothers standing in the doorways. He saw the heavy trucks pounding over the brick pavements, and the rattling wagons, and he thought of the calm that rested over his own boundless country. What a difference there was between the fetid air that rose from this cavernous street and the invigorating breeze that swept across his prairie lands out West! What a difference there was between his stalwart, robust cowboys and the wan-faced, hollow-chested men he saw about him!
The boy before him, according to all the rules of the game should have been another victim of the environment in which he lived. Dean found himself liking the lad, his actions, and especially his championship of the weak. Was there much of such material in this crowded, unwholesome place, he wondered, as he continued on his way.
The business that had called Mr. Dean to Chicago was completed and yet he was compelled to wait four days more because he had promised to meet a certain man, who would not arrive in Chicago until then. Time would hang heavily on his hands, he thought. His thoughts traveled back to the newsboy.
There came to him a sudden impulse; he decided to follow it and so he retraced his steps to where the boy was stationed.
“Back again, mister?” The boy smiled in greeting as if to an old friend. But it could be no more than a second’s greeting, for customers kept him busy.
“What’s your name, sonny?” the man asked, when the opportunity offered.
“Ted—Ted Marsh,” answered the boy.
“Will you soon be through?” Dean inquired. “I’ll tell you why I ask. I should like you to take me about the city. I know something about it, but there are lots of places I want to see which you can show me. I will pay you for your time, of course.”
The boy thought for a minute. He turned and looked squarely at the man. Dean liked that—he met his eye.
“You will have to wait until I finish my papers,” the boy said. “Then I will have to run home and let my mother know. Otherwise she would worry. But I’ll tell you what, sir”—a new idea had come to him—“I can take you down to the Settlement; you can see that while I finish up.”