time.  After he had finished this meal, Mrs. Sharp managed to find him plenty to do for some hours, and then her husband laid out work for him, at which he devoted himself all the rest of the day, except when he was wanted in the kitchen for some purpose or other.  And so it continued, day after day, from morning until night.  Not an hour’s relaxation was allowed the child; and if, from weariness or disheartened feeling, he sometimes lingered over a piece of work, a severe scolding or some punishment from Mrs. Sharp was sure to follow.

Thus things went on, every day adding to the cold of a rapidly advancing northern winter.  But Mrs. Sharp still thought, according to her first conclusions in regard to Henry’s clothes, that “they would do.”  They were not very warm, it is true—­that she could not help admitting.  “But then he is used to wearing thinner clothes than other children,” she reasoned, “or else his mother would have put warmer ones on him.  And, any how, I see no use in letting him come right down as a dead expense upon our hands.  He hasn’t earned his salt yet, much less a winter suit of clothes.”

But the poor little fellow was no more used to bearing exposure to the chilling winds of winter than she had been when a child.  He therefore shrunk shiveringly in the penetrating air whenever forced to go beyond the door.  This did not fail to meet the eye of Mrs. Sharp—­indeed, her eye was rarely off of him when he was within the circle of its vision—­and it always irritated her.  And why?  It reproved her for not providing warmer clothes for the child; and hurt her penurious spirit with the too palpable conviction that before many weeks had passed they would be compelled to lay out some money for “the brat,” as she had begun frequently to designate him to her husband, especially when she felt called upon to complain of him for idleness, carelessness, dulness, stupidity, wastefulness, uncleanliness, hoggishness, or some other one of the score of faults she found in a child of ten years old, whom she put down to work as steadily as a grown person.

A single month made a great change in his external appearance; such a change as would have made him unfamiliar even to his mother’s eye.  While under her care, his clothes, though poor, had always been whole and clean—­his skin well washed, and his hair combed smoothly.  Now, the color of his thin jacket and trowsers could scarcely have been told for the dust and grease which had become imbedded in their texture.  His skin was begrimed until it was many shades darker, and his hair stood stiffly about his head, in matted portions, looking as if a comb had not touched it for weeks.  One would hardly have imagined that so great a change could have passed upon a boy in a few weeks as had passed over him.  When he left his mother’s humble abode, there was something about him that instantly attracted the eye of almost any one who looked at him attentively, and won for him favorable impressions.  His skin was pure and white, and his mild blue eyes, with their expression of innocent confidence, looked every one in the face openly.  Now there was something repulsive to almost every one about the dirty boy, who went moping about with soiled face and hands, a cowed look, and shrinking gait.  Scarcely any one seemed to feel a particle of sympathy for him, either in or out of the house where he dwelt.