And then the gentleman showed him a little room, divided off at the end of the shop, and asked Tom if it was light enough to work in, and Tom said it could not be better; and then the gentleman clapped him on the shoulder, and told him to go to work in it as soon as he pleased, for these were his goods, and that was his shop!
Poor Tom looked as if he were dreaming. He tried to speak two or three times, but failed. Then, great tears dropped over his cheeks, and he said, "God bless you, sir, but I don't know what to say."
"I'm very glad of it," said the gentleman, smiling; "because I don't want you to say anything; only go home and bring your wife and baby, because there is a nice parlor and bed-room overhead, and I want to see how they look in it."
Well, the amount of it was, that the poor tailor's wife was as crazy as the tailor himself; the baby crowed, and the little terrier dog barked; and, altogether, they had a moving time of it, that day.
I can't tell you the kind gentleman's name, because he never does a charity to have it published; but, sure I am, the recording angel has written it in the "Book of Life."
It was very weary, lying there so long. Betsey had counted all the squares, and three-cornered pieces, and circles, in the patch-work quilt upon her bed; she knew there were six more red than green ones, and that one of the circles was pieced seven times.
Yes, poor lame Betsey was very tired; not that she was unused to lying there, day after day, while her mother went out washing; but, somehow, this day had seemed longer and more tedious than any which had gone before. To be sure she had last year's almanac, and a torn newspaper, but she knew them both by heart. Betsey wished she "only had a little book," but she knew mother couldn't buy books, when she had not money enough for bread; so she twisted and turned, and rubbed her lame foot, and lay and looked at the mantel with its pewter lamp, and the shelf with its two earthen bowls, and its wooden spoons and platters, and the bench with her mother's wash tub on it and a square of brown soap, and the brown jug full of starch, and the old worn-out broom and mop. Betsey could have seen them just as well had her eyes been shut, she had looked at them so many times.
Did I tell you Betsey was "alone?" Oh no—there were four or five families in the some entry. There was Mrs. O'Flanigan with her six red-headed, quarrelsome children and a drunken husband, who beat her everyday till she screamed with pain; and then the six little Flanigans all screamed, too, till Betsey would put her fingers in her ears to shut out the dreadful sounds.