"An't this bully, now?" said Jack in an undertone, when he stood before the fire in the lighted room, and Joe, with round, staring eyes, but not a word of complaint or fear, had been put on the wooden chair. "I say, now, Joe an't much, but he'll never blab; but I'se all right. What yer want us to do, now, sir?"
"To get warm," answered Dick. "I was once a newsboy, and slept under stoops and sheds, like the rest of them; but now I've got a fire of my own, and I wanted company; so I went out and got you and Joe, and now make yourselves at home for tonight. Here's some crackers and cheese, and when you've had something to eat you can go to sleep here. It's better than out there, isn't it?"
The newsboy stared at Dick, and grunted something which sounded very much as if he did not believe a word that his host had said. The other sat silent, stolid, and seemingly ready to hear anything. He ate his share of the crackers and cheese greedily, but with a watchful eye on the giver. The warmth, however, soon proved too much for his vigilance, and, though his eyes were still fixed on Dick's face, they were heavy and expressionless. At last, Dick took him up, undressed him, and laid him in his bed in the corner; and then, for the first time, Joe's tongue was loosened. "There, now," he said, as he lay exactly as Dick had placed him, "I are dead and gone at last. Twasn't no lies about t'other world; they wasn't a foolin' on us, after all. Here an't no more Heralds and Tribunes. I are dead and gone at last!" And so rejoicing, Joe's eyes closed securely, and it is likely he dreamt of angels, if he dreamt at all, until morning came.
"He an't much," said Jack, whom this act of Dick's, together with the fire and the food, had made less incredulous and more confidential. "He's a soft 'un; he an't got the right pluck. He'll never be nobody."
"Is he your brother?" asked Dick. "Do yer think I'd have him for my brother? He's a youngster, come from nobody don't know where. He was fetching up in my quarters last winter, and didn't know his name nor nothin'; so we gives him a start, us fellers, and he's stuck on to me ever since."
Then Dick asked more about his new friend's life, and told him a little his own, and a story or two that he thought suited to his understanding; and, having won the child to believe a little in his good intentions, had the satisfaction of seeing him at his ease, and willing to go to sleep with Joe in the corner. When this was accomplished, Dick put out the fire and the light, and lay down on the floor to sleep soundly and well, until the joy-bells from the great city churches should wake his guests and himself to the glad tidings that Christmas had come again.
Chapter III.
And now I am sure you are satisfied that Dick was on the right road, acting religion as fast as he learned it; trying to be all he knew—to live a truthful, generous, self-respecting life. He had little help, you know, and, if he followed that crowd that I told you of oftener than before, and heard much that enabled him to take whole books into his "inner consciousness" which would otherwise have been a dead letter to him, he was not one to make a flourish of trumpets about it, or to dream of complaining that the world would not stand still until he got up to it. He had but one intimate friend, it is true; but he was a friend you and I might be glad to win; a friend who never argued or lectured, but only quietly built his life on the only true foundation—the true faith—and then left it to show for itself. So, simply trusting in whatever was good, yet so fierce against whatever was evil, scornful of everything wrong and weak, practising as well as believing, you may be sure Carl Staffs would never have held out his honest hand to Dick, if Dick were not worthy of it. And this makes me think great things of my hero, of whom scarcely anybody thought at all. He had his place in Ames & Harden's store, and he had his talks, too, now with one person, now with another, and perhaps thought of things he heard. He was only a boy yet, and had his follies, without doubt, fancying at times that there was something in him, if circumstances would only draw it out, which would prove him a great deal worthier of high places than those now occupying them. I am not sure but that, if he had had a country-home, he might sometimes have lain down under the trees, and, while watching in a dreamy way the clouds sailing down to the west, and the vigilant stars coming out to guard the earth in the sun's absence, and listening to the wind among the trees, the twittering of some wakeful bird, or the rustling of some grand old river, he might have had yearnings no one could explain, and not have felt the sky too far to climb or the river too deep to fathom; for Dick's was only a boy's heart, that had still to learn that we cannot go from the Broadway pavement to Trinity spire in one step. Even in his city home, if home it could be called, it may be that, just after he had been to church with Carl, he had glowed with the thought that he—even he—might some day be a Loyola or a Francis Xavier, for "the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
But as yet his life consciously held but one romance—one dream of earth. There were few to care for him; but there was a little girl once who had made Christmas memorable to him, and Dick had not forgotten her. She had grown a beautiful young lady now, in Dick's eyes, though to all others she was merely a thin, dark school-girl. They still lived in the handsome house on Fourteenth street, and Carl Stoffs and his band played for many a dance there, although I am sorry to say that, even after a New Year's party, Dick had to be sent more than once to Mr. Brandon's office with a little bill, due to Ames & Harden, mostly for school-books, novels, and gilt annuals. But then that was no fault of Mary's, you know.