Tom watched him as he ascended the steps of a neighboring porch. He had a strange fascination for the boy, and it was not till the door closed behind him that Tom’s steady gaze was averted. Then he shuffled off down the street.
[Chapter II]
“Hats Off”
Tom Slade awoke at about eleven o’clock, swung his legs to the floor, yawned, rubbed his eyes, felt blindly for his tattered shoes and sniffed the air.
Something was wrong, that was sure. Tom sniffed again. Something had undoubtedly happened. The old familiar odor which had dwelt in the Slade apartment all winter, the stuffy smell of bed clothes and dirty matting, of kerosene and smoke and fried potatoes and salt-fish and empty beer bottles, had given place to something new. Tom sniffed again.
Then, all of a sudden, his waking senses became aware of his father seated in his usual greasy chair, sideways to the window.
And the window was open!
The stove-lifter which had been used to pry it up lay on the sill, and the spring air, gracious and democratic, was pouring in amid the squalor just as it was pouring in through the wide-swung cathedral windows of John Temple’s home up in Grantley Square.
“Yer opened the winder, didn’ yer?” said Tom.
“Never you mind what I done,” replied his father.