"Look here!" he cried, "where are you going to get your dinner to-day?"
"I can get a bite here as well as anywhere. It don't matter much to me," replied the old man.
"Dine with me," said Bert, laughing. "I'd like to have you."
"I'm afraid I couldn't afford to dine as you are going to," said the man, with a smile, his eyes twinkling again and his white front teeth shining.
"I'll pay for your dinner!" Bert exclaimed. "Come! We don't have a Thanksgiving but once a year, and a feller wants a good time then."
"But you are waiting for another boy."
"Oh, Hop Houghton! He won't come now, it's so late. He's gone to a place down in North Street, I guess—a place I don't like: there's so much tobacco smoked and so much beer drank there." Bert cast a final glance up the street. "No, he won't come now. So much the worse for him! He likes the men down there; I don't."
"Ah!" said the man, taking off his hat, and giving it a brush with his elbow, as they entered the restaurant, as if trying to appear as respectable as he could in the eyes of a newsboy of such fastidious tastes.
To make him feel quite comfortable in his mind on that point, Bert hastened to say:
"I mean rowdies, and such. Poor people, if they behave themselves, are just as respectable to me as rich folks. I ain't the least mite aristocratic."