"Thank you! You are very kind, considering that we are strangers."
"Oh, well, I can judge of you by your looks. I shouldn't be afraid to recommend you."
"Thank you!" he replied; "but unless you can offer me as much as five dollars a week, I should feel obliged to keep on selling papers. I not only have myself to look out for, but a mother and little brother."
Stephen nodded to himself complacently. It was the very information of which he was in search.
"Then your father isn't living?" he said.
"No. He died in California."
"Uncle Thomas made his money in California," Stephen said to himself. "I wonder if he knew this newsboy's father."
"Five dollars is little enough for three persons to live upon," he went on, in a sympathetic manner.
"Mother earns something by sewing," Luke answered, unsuspiciously; "but it takes all we can make to support us."
"Then they can't have any other resources," thought Stephen. "I am getting on famously."