"I will, sir."
"Now, we will see about a place for you to sleep."
Over the counting room was an apartment in which two of the ostlers slept. There was room for another bed, and one was immediately set up for Harry's use.
Once more, then, our hero was at home, if a mere abiding place deserves that hallowed name. It was not an elegant, or even a commodious, apartment in which Harry was to sleep. The walls were dingy and black; the beds looked as though they had never been clean; and there was a greasy smell which came from several harnesses that were kept there. It was comfortable, if not poetical; and Harry soon felt perfectly at home.
His first duty was to cultivate the acquaintance of the ostlers. He found them to be rough, good-natured men, not over-scrupulous about their manners or their morals. If it does not occur to my young readers, it will to their parents, that this was not a fit place for a boy—that he was in constant contact with corruption. His companions were good-hearted men; but this circumstance rendered them all the more dangerous. There was no fireside of home, at which the evil effects of communication with men of loose morals would be counteracted. Harry had not been an hour in their society before he caught himself using a big oath—which, when he had gone to bed, he heartily repented, renewing his resolution with the promise to try again.
He was up bright and early the next morning, made a fire in the counting room, and had let out half the horses in the stable to water, before Major Phillips came out. His services were in demand, as Joe Flint, for some reason, had not come to the stable that morning.
The stable keeper declared that he had gone on a "spree," and told Harry he might take his place.
Harry did take his place; and the ostlers declared that, in everything but cleaning the horses, he made good his place. The knowledge and skill which he had obtained at the poorhouse was of great value to him; and, at night, though he was very tired, he was satisfied that he had done a good day's work.
The ostlers took their meals at the house of Major Phillips, which stood at one side of the stable yard. Harry did not like Mrs. Phillips very well; she was cross, and the men said she was a "regular Tartar." But he was resolved to keep the peace. He afterwards found it a difficult matter; for he had to bring wood and water, and do other chores about the house, and he soon ascertained that she was determined not to be pleased with anything he did. He tried to keep his temper, however, and meekly submitted to all her scolding and grumbling.
Thus far, while Harry has been passing through the momentous period of his life with which we commenced his story, we have minutely detailed the incidents of his daily life, so that we have related the events of only a few days. This is no longer necessary. He has got a place, and of course one day is very much like every other. The reader knows him now—knows what kind of boy he is, and what his hopes and expectations are. The reader knows, too, the great moral epoch in his history—the event which roused his consciousness of error, and stimulated him to become better; that he has a talisman in his mind, which can be no better expressed than by those words he so often repeated, "She hoped he would be a good boy." And her angel smile went with him to encourage him in the midst of trial and temptation—to give him the victory over the foes that assailed him.