I guess we can
find some better place without having to pay much more. When we
move, you must let me pay my share of the rent."
"We'll see about that," said Dick. "Do you propose to move to
Fifth Avenoo?"
"Not just at present, but to some more agreeable neighborhood than
this. We'll wait till you get a situation, and then we can decide."
A few days later, as Dick was looking about for customers in the
neighborhood of the Park, his attention was drawn to a fellow
boot-black, a boy about a year younger than himself, who appeared to
have been crying.
"What's the matter, Tom?" asked Dick. "Haven't you had luck to-day?"
"Pretty good," said the boy; "but we're havin' hard times at home.
Mother fell last week and broke her arm, and to-morrow we've got to
pay the rent, and if we don't the landlord says he'll turn us out."
"Haven't you got anything except what you earn?" asked Dick.
"No," said Tom, "not now. Mother used to earn three or four dollars
a week; but she can't do nothin' now, and my little sister and
brother are too young."
Dick had quick sympathies. He had been so poor himself, and
obliged to submit to so many privations that he knew from personal
experience how hard it was. Tom Wilkins he knew as an excellent boy
who never squandered his money, but faithfully carried it home to
his mother. In the days of his own extravagance and shiftlessness
he had once or twice asked Tom to accompany him to the Old Bowery
or Tony Pastor's, but Tom had always steadily refused.
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