“Mag knew me, ma’am,” said my vagrant, as proudly as a prince could speak if his honor were called in question. “Mag knew what I was, and I learned as fast as I could to get back to her—don’t you think so, ma’am?”
“You learned faster than any one else could; I know that,” I answered. “But, Johnny, how could you bear to go back to begging again?”
“I couldn’t bear it, ma’am, and I didn’t. I had money enough, that Mr. Tom had given me, to buy myself a stock of papers. I’m a newsboy now, and I teach Mag to read out of the papers I have left. And old Meg knows better now than to beat Mag, and we are so much happier. It’s all owing to you; and I came back to thank you,—but I never could forsake Mag for long. I must stay with my own.”
“But they are not your own.”
“Mag is, ma’am.”
He was as resolute to ally himself, for that girl’s sake, with poverty, and, if need were, shame, as ever was a hero to live or die for the land of his birth; and out in the rain, down the desolate street, I watched my vagrant go away from me for ever. But I did not pity him. No soul is to be pitied which has reached life’s crowning good,—the power to love another better than itself. Nor do I know any curled darling of fortune who seems to me happier than was my vagrant.