When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way around the various beds and pallets, took Berney's school satchel from the top of the wardrobe. Retracing his steps, he returned to the kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he began to take an inventory of his mental stock. One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look deepening in his face. "Berney she ain't but fourteen an' she gits on to 'em," he said to himself; "looks like I orter." Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair repeated the sentences again and again to himself. "That you, Joe?" asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later. "I didn't know you'd come. Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was at Hank's Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git him." "It's twelve o'clock," remonstrated Joe. "I know it," said Mrs. Ridder, yawning, "but I reckon you better go. The old man always gits the rheumatiz when he lays out all night, and that there rheumatiz medicine cost sixty-five cents a bottle!" "All right," said Joe with a resignation born of experience, "but don't you go and put no more of the kids in my bed. Jack and Gus kick the stuffin' out of me now." And with this parting injunction he went wearily out into the night, giving up his struggle with Minerva, only to begin the next round with Bacchus. The seeds of ambition, though sown late, grew steadily, and Joe became so desirous of proving worthy of the consideration of Mrs. Beaver that he took the boss of the shops partially into his confidence. "It's a first-rate idea, Joe," said the boss, a big, capable fellow who had worked his way up from the bottom. "I could move you right along the line if you had a better education. I have a good offer up in Chicago next year; if you can get more book sense in your head, I will take you along." "Where can I get it at?" asked Joe, somewhat dubious of his own power of achievement. "Night school," said the boss. "I know a man that teaches in the Settlement over on Burk Street. I'll put you in there if you like." Now, the prospect of going to school to a man who had been head of a family for seven years, who had been the champion scrapper of the South End, who was in the midst of a critical love affair, was trebly humiliating. But Joe was game, and while he determined to keep the matter as secret as possible, he agreed to the boss's proposition. "You're mighty stingy with yourself these days!" said Mittie Beaver one night a month later, when he stopped on his way to school. Joe grinned somewhat foolishly. "I come every evenin'," he said. "For 'bout ten minutes," said Mittie, with a toss of her voluminous pompadour; "there's some wants more'n ten minutes." "Ben Schenk?" asked Joe, alert with jealousy.