"Why don't you go home, lad? You'll freeze to death here."
"This is my home."
"Sho! Do you mean to say you live here?"
"Yes." The lad hesitated, then asked, "Are you from the country, sir?"
"Wal, yes, I be. Though folks don't generally mistrust it when I'm slicked up. But I don't stand no quizzing."
The boy appeared surprised at this sudden outburst, and said, with a frank, manly air that appeased Joe:
"I thought if you lived a long way off I wouldn't mind answering your questions. I'm English, and my name's John Harper. I don't mix with the street boys, so they call me the hermit!"
"Don't you 'mix' with your own folks, neither!"
"They were lost at sea in our passage to this country," was the low reply. "Sometimes I wish I'd died with them, and not been saved for such a miserable life. Can't get work, though I've tried hard enough, and I'd rather starve than beg. I can't beg!" he cried, despairingly. "I'm ordered off for a vagrant if I warm myself in the depots, and I don't suppose the city o' Boston'll let me stay here long."
"Don't get down at the mouth—don't!" said honest Joe, in a choking voice, as the extent of this misery dawned upon him.