"'Please may I--please, dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I go?' "Master Harry's father he takes Master Harry in his hand, and I leads the way with the candle to that other bedroom where the elderly lady is seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers junior is fast asleep. There the father lifts the boy up to the pillow, and he lays his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers junior, and gently draws it to him. "And that's all about it. Master Harry's father drove away in the chaise having hold of Master Harry's hand. The elderly lady Mrs. Harry Walmers junior that was never to be (she married a captain long after and went to India) went off next day." POOR JO! Jo was a crossing-sweeper; every day he swept up the mud, and begged for pennies from the people who passed. Poor Jo wasn't pretty and he wasn't clean. His clothes were only a few poor rags that hardly protected him from the cold and the rain. He had never been to school, and he could neither write nor read--could not even spell his own name. Poor Jo! He was ugly and dirty and ignorant; but he knew one thing, that it was wicked to tell a lie, and knowing this, he always told the truth. One other thing poor Jo knew too well, and that was what being hungry means. For little Jo was very poor. He lived in Tom-all-Alones, one of the most horrible places in all London. The people who live in this dreadful den are the poorest of London poor. All miserably clad, all dirty, all very hungry. They know and like Jo, for he is always willing to go on errands for them, and does them many little acts of kindness. No one in Tom-all-Alones is spoken of by his name. Thus it is that if you inquired there for a boy named Jo, you would be asked whether you meant Carrots, or the Colonel, or Gallows, or young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or the Brick. Jo was generally called Toughy, although a few superior persons who affected a dignified style of speaking called him "the tough subject." Jo used to say he had never had but one friend. It was one cold Winter night, when he was shivering in a door-way near his crossing, that a dark-haired, rough-bearded man turned to look at him, and then came back and began to talk to him. "Have you a friend, boy?" he asked presently. "No, never 'ad none." "Neither have I. Not one. Take this, and Good-night," and so saying the man, who looked very poor and shabby, put into Jo's hand the price of a supper and a night's lodging. Often afterwards the stranger would stop to talk with Jo, and give him money, Jo firmly believed, whenever he had any to give. When he had none, he would merely say, "I am as poor as you are to-day, Jo," and pass on. One day, Jo was fetched away from his crossing to a public-house, where the Coroner was holding an Inquest--an "Inkwich" Jo called it. "Did the boy know the deceased?" asked the Coroner. Indeed Jo had known him; it was his only friend who was dead.