"It's the first time I was ever in a house like this," Joe added, in a low tone. "It's awful nice, an' fellers what have a reg'lar home must be mighty happy." "Where did you live in the city?" aunt Dorcas asked, after a pause. "I knocked 'round, mostly. Twice I've bunked with some other feller in a room what we hired,--of course it wasn't anything like the one up-stairs, but payin' so high for a bed was a little too rich for my blood." "But you had to sleep somewhere," aunt Dorcas suggested, her eyes opening wider, as she gained an insight into a phase of life which was novel to her. The interest she displayed invited Joe's confidence, and he told her of the life led by himself and his particular friends in a manner which interested the little woman deeply. It was not a story related for the purpose of exciting sympathy, but a plain recital of facts, around which was woven no romance to soften the hardships, and there were tears in aunt Dorcas's faded eyes when the boy concluded. "It seems wicked for me to be living alone in this house, when there are human beings close at hand who haven't a roof to shelter them," the little woman said, softly. "Why don't boys like you go out to the country to work, instead of staying in the city, where you can hardly keep soul and body together?" "We couldn't do even that, if we turned farmers," Master Plummer replied, quickly. "Nobody'd hire us." "Why not?" "I know of a feller what tried to get a job on a farm, an' he hung 'round the markets, askin' every man he met, but all of 'em told him city boys was no good,--that it would take too long to break 'em in." "But what's to prevent your getting a chance to work in a store, where you could earn enough to pay your board?" "I had a notion last year that I'd try that kind of work," Plums said, slowly, "an' looked about a good bit for a job; but the fellers what have got homes an' good clothes pick up them snaps, as I soon found out. It seems like when you get into the business of sellin' papers, or shinin', you can't do anything else." "Selling papers, or what?" aunt Dorcas asked, with a perplexed expression on her face. "Shinin'; that's blackin' boots, you know. Here's Joe, he scraped together seven dollars an' eighty-three cents, an' said to hisself that he'd be a howlin' swell, so what does he do but start a fruit-stand down on West Street, hire a clerk, an' go into the business in style. It didn't take him more'n two months to bust up, an' now he ain't got enough even to start in on sellin' papers, 'cause he spent it all on the princess." "Who is the princess?" aunt Dorcas asked, with animation. "She's a kid what he picked up on the street." "Oh!" and the little woman looked relieved. "I thought, last night, when he spoke of the princess, that it was a child he meant." "Why, didn't I tell you it was?" "You said she was a kid." "So she is, an' ain't that a child, or the next thing to it,--a girl?"