"Yes, chicken," said Lenny, as he finished his sad story, "you'd hev froze to death as sure as a gun. But cheer up; here we're home at last."
Never will Joe forget the glow and warmth of the "drying-room" into which he was led. There were three other boys there hanging up their wet clothes to dry.
And wasn't the bath warm and delightful into which they plunged him!
For a long time Joe could not understand why there should be a clean, whole shirt, a jacket and trousers, socks and shoes, all ready for such a poor miserable little stranger.
And the bowl of hot bread and milk, what a luxury it was!—surely he must be in heaven, the place where all good, unhappy boys go when they die. Perhaps he had really died, out in that pitiless storm, and was there? He rubbed his eyes, and expected to see wings, and was disappointed at not finding them.
The books of the institution tell how the seven-year-old child, deserted by his inhuman parents, was taken within the sheltering doors of the Lodging-House; but in another book the recording angel has written how a simple "call-boy" on that dark night did the will of his heavenly Master.
That night Joe had a blessed sleep in his little bed with its nice sheets and downy "comfortables," so that when he woke the next morning he was a new little man; but after breakfast he was happier than a king, for the Superintendent loaned him a small sum of money to buy some newspapers.
Two or three of the boys volunteered to teach him "lots" about selling them; and they did, for before night he had sold two sets of morning and evening papers.
A prouder, more independent little fellow than Joe can not be found anywhere, because he not only earns his meals and lodging, and helps a comrade occasionally, but every night drops pennies or nickels into savings-box No. 90.
This he has been doing for some months; at the end of each he receives ten per cent. interest.