"I an't gen'rally called mean," Dick answered with great dignity.
"Don't you wonder, Jim," said Dick, as they made friends and passed on—"don't it seem curious how some folks is rich and purty like them there, and others is poor and ugly like me and you, Jim?"
"George! speak for yerself, if ye like. Guess I'd pass in a crowd, if I'd the fine fixin's!"
"S'posin' me and you had dandified coats and yeller gloves, and the fixin's to match, s'pose anybody'd know we was newsboys?" Dick asked thoughtfully.
"I rayther think," said Jim, "we'd be a deal sight handsomer'n some of them chaps as has 'em now."
"Let's save our money and try it, Jim."
"'Nuff said," answered Jim, laughing. And the newsboys in their queer garments, and with their light hearts, passed out of sight of Mr. Brandon's brown-stone house and fair-haired children.
But not out of all remembrance. The children had a party that Christmas afternoon; and when they were tired of romping, and were seated around the room, the girls playing with their dolls; the Catholic ones telling the others in low voices about the flowers and lights, and the wonderful manger which they had seen at Mass that morning; and the boys eagerly listening to the stories of faraway lands, which one of the older people was telling, little Mary knelt in an arm-chair, and looked out of the window at the people hurrying through the driving rain and snow, and at the street-lamps glaring through the wet and cold. Her kind little heart had been very light, and a strange joyousness had surrounded her all day, making her more gentle than ever, so that she had not spoken one hasty word, or once hesitated to take the lowest part in any of the plays. Though she did not know it, the little infant Jesus had smiled on her that morning when she was kind to the poor, homeless newsboy; and now she understood—for charity had enlarged her mind—more distinctly than she ever had before, that there were many cold and desolate children for whom there were no earthly glad tidings that day, yet who were as much God's own as the little ones grouped around her father's pleasant parlors. Then, just as she did the best she could, and prayed in her heart for the children of the poor, she thought she saw the newsboy to whom she had spoken in the morning standing close to the railing by the window; but before she could be sure of it, the servant lighted the gas; she heard the children calling her for a new game, and she ran lightly away. But there was one crouched in the cold outside, who wondered at the sudden light and glow within; and as the bewildered newsboy saw her dancing past the lighted windows, it seemed to him that it was not so far, after all, to the heaven and the angels of whom he had heard; for the "glad tidings" had come to Dick, even Dick, and they woke up the good, the will to do right, which is in every heart, and which did not sleep again in him, even when the little, uncared-for, outcast head rested on the stone steps that Christmas night.