All the delightful interests of his vagabond life rose up to beguile him; all its miseries were forgotten. He must get to the office right away. This was a blizzard, sure enough! and that meant “extras” to cry, sidewalks to shovel, a mad haste to get ahead of his mates and gather in more nickels than they, maybe stolen rides behind livery sleighs when the storm was over, and a thousand and one enjoyable things such as poor Miss Armacost could never even dream of!
“Hi! Here’s for it!” shouted the happy boy, and leaped forward into the night and the storm, which silently received him.
CHAPTER III.
THE BLIZZARD.
“Whew! I’ve never seen such a storm since I lived in Baltimore city!” cried John Johns, looking out of the window, early on the morning following Molly’s visit to Miss Armacost. “It snows as if it never meant to stop. How still it is, too! Not a car running, not a wagon rattling over the stones, everything as quiet as a country graveyard.”
“Not quite, John. There’s a milk cart trying to force itself through the drifts. My! look into the alley between us and Miss Armacost’s! The snow is heaped as high as the fence, in some spots.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m a plumber! There’ll be plenty of work for me and my kind to-day. We’re not used to anything of this sort down here, and nobody’ll think to look out for his water pipes. Just listen to that wind, will you?”
“I’d rather not. It makes me think of poor folks without coals, and babies without their milk, and lots of suffering.”