A few days later, as Dick was looking about for customers in the neighborhood of the Park, his attention was drawn to a fellow boot-black, a boy about a year younger than himself, who appeared to have been crying.
“What’s the matter, Tom?” asked Dick. “Haven’t you had luck to-day?”
“Pretty good,” said the boy; “but we’re havin’ hard times at home. Mother fell last week and broke her arm, and to-morrow we’ve got to pay the rent, and if we don’t the landlord says he’ll turn us out.”
“Haven’t you got anything except what you earn?” asked Dick.
“No,” said Tom, “not now. Mother used to earn three or four dollars a week; but she can’t do nothin’ now, and my little sister and brother are too young.”
Dick had quick sympathies. He had been so poor himself, and obliged to submit to so many privations that he knew from personal experience how hard it was. Tom Wilkins he knew as an excellent boy who never squandered his money, but faithfully carried it home to his mother. In the days of his own extravagance and shiftlessness he had once or twice asked Tom to accompany him to the Old Bowery or Tony Pastor’s, but Tom had always steadily refused.
“I’m sorry for you, Tom,” he said. “How much do you owe for rent?”
“Two weeks now,” said Tom.
“How much is it a week?”
“Two dollars a week—that makes four.”