"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to the Lodge. I think I won't sell any more matches to-day."
"I'll take all you've left," said Richard. "Don't trouble yourself about them. But you are not going to the Lodge."
Mark looked at him in surprise.
"I shall take you home with me to-night," he said. "You are not well, and I will look after you. At the Lodge there will be a crowd of boys, and the noise will do you harm."
"You are very kind," said Mark; "but I'm afraid I'll trouble you."
"No," said Richard, "I shan't count it a trouble. I was once a poor boy like you, and I found friends. I'll be your friend. Go back and lie down again, and in about an hour I shall be ready to take you with me."
It seemed strange to Mark to think that there was somebody who proposed to protect and look after him. In many of the offices which he visited he met with rough treatment, and was ordered out of the way, as if he were a dog, and without human feelings. Many who treated him in this way were really kind-hearted men who had at home children whom they loved, but they appeared to forget that these neglected children of the street had feelings and wants as well as their own, who were tenderly nurtured. They did not remember that they were somebody's children, and that cold, and harshness, and want were as hard for them to bear as for those in a higher rank of life. But Mark was in that state of weakness when it seemed sweet to throw off all care or thought for the future, and to sink back upon the soft bale with the thought that he had nothing to do but to rest.
"That boy is going to be sick," thought Richard Hunter to himself. "I think he is going to have a fever."