"I don't see how his family get along."
"Nor I, either."
After Abner had warmed himself, he left the room. Harry was haunted by the sad look and desponding tones of the poor lame girl. It was a bitter cold evening; and what if Joe's family were suffering with the cold and hunger! It was sad to think of such a thing; and Harry was deeply moved.
"She hoped I would be a good boy. She is very sick now, and perhaps she will die," said Harry to himself. "What would she do, if she were here now?"
He knew very well what she would do, and he determined to do it himself. His heart was so deeply moved by the picture of sorrow and suffering with which his imagination had invested the home of the intemperate ostler that it required no argument to induce him to go.
But he must go prepared to do something. However sweet and consoling may be the sympathy of others to those in distress, it will not warm the chilled limbs or feed the hungry mouths; and Harry thanked God then that he had not spent his money foolishly upon gewgaws and gimcracks, or in gratifying a selfish appetite.
After assuring himself that no one was approaching, he jumped on his bedstead, and reaching up into a hole in the board ceiling of the room, he took out a large wooden pill box, which was nearly filled with various silver coins, from a five-cent piece to a half dollar. Putting the box in his pocket, he went down to the stable, and inquired more particularly in relation Joe's house.
When he had received such directions as would enable him to find the place, he told Abner he wanted to be absent a little while, and left the stable. He had no difficulty in finding the home of the drunkard's family. It was a little, old wooden house, in Avery Street, opposite Haymarket Place, which has long since been pulled down to make room for a more elegant dwelling.
Harry knocked, and was admitted by the little lame girl whom he had seen at the stable.
"I have come to see if I can do anything for you," said Harry, as he moved forward into the room in which the family lived.