Was it one’s heart that had grown heavier with listening to the widow’s sorrows? Perhaps so; for certainly the stairs creaked more loudly as I went down past misery staring from more than one lair, hollow-eyed and gaunt, as though speaking as the flower-selling widow; and then I stood once more in the court, threaded my way past the children that flocked there, several of whom were fishing with bits of string for the lost coin, and, on reaching the embouchure, encountered young Trousers, who grinned a welcome as I passed, and ceased printing black feet upon the pavement.
“I ain’t spint that there copper,” he shouted after me.
“Haven’t you?” I said. “What shall you do with it, my man?”
“Give it to mother,” said the grimy young rascal, with an earnestness that there was no mistaking; and I passed on, thinking what a fine lad that little fellow would have made if planted in different soil with some one to carefully watch him and tend.
Chapter Five.
Ruth’s Stepfather.
I feel a shrinking—a strange kind of hesitation in narrating some of these adventures lest the reader should think me full of egotism, and that I told of my little charities as if proud of what I had done. Pray chase any such idea from your minds, for I can honestly say that no feeling of vanity ever existed in mine. I am merely relating the pleasures of my life, my rambles amongst weeds and flowers—the weeds and sad lined blossoms of our town.
I was much troubled in my mind as to how I could most help the widow of Burt’s Buildings, and I knew that I could best assist her by helping her to help herself. One of her great troubles was that she had to leave her little ones so long, and a strange sense of pain had shot through me as she spoke of finding them huddled together as they had cried themselves to sleep. What could I do then?