“No, he won’t come now.  So much the worse for him!  He likes the men down there; I don’t.”

“Ah!” said the man, taking off his hat and giving it a brush with his elbow as they entered the restaurant, as if trying to appear as respectable as he could in the eyes of a newsboy of such fastidious tastes.

To make him feel quite comfortable in his mind on that point, Bert hastened to say:—­

“I mean rowdies, and such.  Poor people, if they behave themselves, are just as respectable to me as rich folks.  I ain’t at all aristocratic!”

“Ah, indeed!” And the old man smiled again, and seemed to look relieved.  “I’m very glad to hear it.”

He placed his hat on the floor, and took a seat opposite Bert at a little table which they had all to themselves.  Bert offered him the bill of fare.

“I must ask you to choose for me; nothing very extravagant, you know I am used to plain fare.”

“So am I. But I’m going to have a dinner, for once in my life, and so are you,” cried Bert, generously.  “What do you say to chicken soup—­and wind up with a big piece of squash pie!  How’s that for a Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Sumptuous!” said the old man, appearing to glow with the warmth of the room and the prospect of a good dinner.  “But won’t it cost you too much?”

“Too much?  No, sir!” said Bert.  “Chicken soup, fifteen cents; pie—­they give tremendous big pieces here, thick, I tell you—­ten cents.  That’s twenty-five cents; half a dollar for two.  Of course, I don’t do this way every day in the year!  But mother’s glad to have me, once in a while.  Here! waiter!” And Bert gave his princely order as if it were no very great thing for a liberal young fellow like him, after all.

“Where is your mother?  Why don’t you take dinner with her?” the little man asked.

Bert’s face grew sober in a moment.

“That’s the question!  Why don’t I?  I’ll tell you why I don’t.  I’ve got the best mother in the world!  What I’m trying to do is to make a home for her, so we can live together, and eat our Thanksgiving dinners together, sometime.  Some boys want one thing, some another; there’s one goes in for good times, another’s in such a hurry to get rich, he don’t care much how he does it; but what I want most of anything is to be with my mother and my two sisters again, and I am not ashamed to say so.”

Bert’s eyes grew very tender, and he went on; while his companion across the table watched him with a very gentle, searching look.

“I haven’t been with her now for two years—­hardly at all since father died.  When his business was settled up,—­he kept a little hosiery store on Hanover street,—­it was found he hadn’t left us anything.  We had lived pretty well, up to that time, and I and my two sisters had been to school; but then mother had to do something, and her friends got her places to go out nursing; she’s a nurse now.  Everybody likes her, and she has enough to do.  We couldn’t be with her, of course.  She got us boarded at a good place, but I saw how hard it was going to be for her to support us, so I said, I’m a boy; I can do something for myself; you just pay the board for the girls and keep them to school, and I’ll go to work, and maybe help you a little, besides taking care of myself.”