Dan shook his head.
"Can't afford it," he said. "I must get along without the luxuries. Bread and butter is good enough for me."
Looking up, Dan met the glance of a boy who was passing—a tall, slender, supercilious-looking boy, who turned his head away scornfully as he met Dan's glance.
"I know him," said Dan to himself. "I ought to know Tom Carver. We used to sit together at school. But that was when father was rich. He won't notice me now. Well, I don't want him to," proceeded Dan, coloring indignantly. "He thinks himself above me, but he needn't. His father failed, too, but he went on living just the same. People say he cheated his creditors. My poor father gave up all he had, and sank into poverty."
This was what passed through Dan's mind. The other boy—Tom Carver—had recognized Dan, but did not choose to show it.
"I wonder whether Dan Mordaunt expected me to notice him," he said to himself. "I used to go to school with him, but now that he is a low newsboy I can't stoop to speak to him. What would my fashionable friends say?"
Tom Carver twirled his delicate cane and walked on complacently, feeling no pity for the schoolfellow with whom he used to be so intimate. He was intensely selfish—a more exceptional thing with boys than men. It sometimes happens that a boy who passes for good-hearted changes into a selfish man; but Tom required no change to become that. His heart was a very small one, and beat only for himself.
Dan walked on, and finally paused before a large tenement-house. He went in at the main entrance, and ascended two flights of stairs. He opened a door, and found himself in the presence of the mother whom he so dearly loved.