"What shall we wear to the party, Dick?"
"We've got good suits of clothes. We can carry them to a tailor's and have them pressed, and they will look well enough. I saw a splendid necktie to-day at a store on Broadway. I'm going to buy it."
"You have a weakness for neckties, Dick."
"You see, Fosdick, if you have a striking necktie, people will look at that, and they won't criticise your face."
"There may be something in that, Dick. I feel a little nervous though. It is the first fashionable party I ever attended."
"Well," said Dick, "I haven't attended many. When I was a boot-black I found it interfered with my business, and so I always declined all the fashionable invitations I got."
"You'd have made a sensation," said Fosdick, "if you had appeared in the costume you then wore."
"That's what I was afraid of. I don't want to make a sensation. I'm too modest."
In fact both the boys, though they were flattered by Ida's invitation, looked forward rather nervously to the evening of the party. For the first time they were to meet and mingle on terms of equality with a large number of young people who had been brought up very differently from themselves. Dick could not help remembering how short a time had elapsed since, with his little wooden box strapped to his back, he used to call out, "Black your boots?" in the city park. Perhaps some of his old customers might be present. Still he knew that he had improved greatly, and that his appearance had changed for the better. It was hardly likely that any one seeing him in Mr. Greyson's drawing-room, would identify him as the Ragged Dick of other days. Then there was another ground for confidence. Ida liked him, and he had a sincere liking for the little girl for whom he had a feeling such as a brother has for a cherished younger sister. So Dick dressed himself for the party, feeling that he should "get through it somehow."
I need not say, of course, that his boots shone with a lustre not to be surpassed even by the professional expert of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It was very evident that Dick had not forgotten the business by which he once gained his livelihood.