Harry Bacon had a sanguine disposition, and always looked on the bright side. His assurances encouraged Rupert a little, and he determined to do his best to find something to do, no matter what.
At five o'clock the store closed. Retail stores kept open later, but early hours are one of the advantages of a wholesale establishment.
Rupert bent his steps towards Elizabeth Street. In an upper apartment in one of the shabby houses fronting on this thoroughfare lived his mother and sister. It was only a three-story house, and there were but two flights of stairs to ascend.
Entering the principal room, Rupert saw his mother with her head bent in an attitude of despondency over the table. Through a door he could see his sister lying uneasily on a bed in a small inner room, her face showing that she was suffering pain.
Rupert stepped forward and with tender sympathy strove to raise his poor mother from her position of despondency.
"What is the matter, mother?" he asked. "Are you not well?"
"Yes, Rupert," she answered, raising her head, "but for the moment I felt discouraged. Grace has been suffering more than usual to-day. Sickness and poverty, too, are hard to bear."
"That is true, mother," and Rupert's heart sank as he remembered that by the end of the week the poverty would become destitution.
"Grace has been unable to eat anything to-day. She thought she could eat an orange, but I absolutely didn't have money enough to buy one."
"She shall have an orange," said Rupert, in a low voice.