We were in pursuit of Laura’s dressmaker, and had just rung the bell at her door, when a little boy presented himself, and, standing on the lower step, uplifted a pathetic pair of blue eyes, and a small tin cup held in a little grimy hand. A large basket was on one arm; and round his neck was one of those great printed placards, such as the blind men wear who sit at the street corners. Laura’s purse was always fuller than mine; and she was extracting a bit of scrip from it, while I bent my near-sighted eyes on the boy’s label. Could it be that I read aright? I looked again. No, I was not mistaken. It read, in great, staring letters—

I HAVE LOST MY HUSBAND IN THE WAR.

In the war! And those blue eyes had not opened, surely, till some time after the war was ended! His husband! I was bewildered. I bent my gaze on him sternly, and asked, as severely as I could,—

“Young man, can you read?”

Laura was fumbling away at the unanswered door-bell. The boy looked as if he wanted to run; but I put my hand on his arm.

“Can you read?” I repeated gravely. I think he shook in his shabby boots, for his voice was not quite steady as he answered,—

“Not much.”

“Not much, I should think. Do you know what this thing says that you’ve got round your neck?”

“Does it say I’m blind?” he asked, with a little frightened quaver.

“No, it says—but do you know what a husband is?”

“Yes, he comes home drunk, and beats Mag and me awful.”

“Did you ever know a boy of your age to have a husband?”

The blue eyes grew so wide open that I wondered if they could ever shut themselves up again; and Laura, who had turned round at my question, looked as if she thought I had suddenly gone mad. The little dressmaker had opened the door, and stood there waiting meekly, with the handle in her hand. But my spirit was up, and I did not care for either of them. I asked again, very impressively, as I thought, with a pause after each word,—

“Did—you—ever—know—a—boy—of—your—age—to—have—a—husband?”

“No, marm,” he gasped, “husbands belongs to women.”

“Then what do you wear this thing for? It says that you have lost your husband in the war.”

The imp actually turned pale, and I almost pitied him.

“Will they put me in prison?” he asked, an abject little whine coming into his voice. “Will they?”

“Did you steal it?”

“I didn’t to say steal it—I just took it. I’d seen the rest put them on when they went out begging, and this was old Meg’s. She wasn’t going out to-day, and I thought no harm to borrow.”

“Then you can’t read?”

“Well, not to say read, marm. I think I could make out a word now and then.”

“Do you want to?”

The face brightened a moment, and, with the curving lips and eager eyes, was really that of a pretty boy.

“Oh, if I could!” half sighed the quivering lips; and then the smile went out, and left blank despair behind it. “It’s no use, marm; she won’t let me.”

“Who won’t? Your mother?”

“No, Mag’s mother—old Meg. My mother’s dead, and I never had any father that ever I heard of; and since mother died old Meg does for me; and every day she sends me out to beg; and if I don’t get much she whips Mag.”

I was growing strangely interested.

“Whips Mag, because you don’t get much?” I said doubtfully. “What for?”

“I guess there’s a hard place on me, marm. She found that it didn’t seem to hurt much, when she whipped me; and so one night Mag was teasing her to stop, and she turned to and whipped Mag, and that made me cry awful; and ever since, if I don’t get enough money, she whips Mag.”

“Are you sure you are telling me the truth?”

I don’t know why I asked the question, for I saw honesty in those clear eyes of his. He looked hurt. Yes, you may laugh if you want to, I’m telling you just as it was—the boy looked as hurt as any of you would if I doubted you. There came a sort of proud shame into his manner. He clutched at the placard round his neck, as if he would tear it off, and answered, sadly,—

“I s’pose I can’t expect anybody to believe me with this round my neck; but, if you would go home with me, Mag could tell you, and you would believe her.”

By this time Laura had gone in, leaving me to finish my interview alone. I reflected a moment. The other day I had heard Tom say he wanted an errand boy. Why should he not have this one? Tom was my brother. I knew just the difficulties he would make,—want of reference, a street beggar, a regular rat of the gutter. I could fancy just how he would talk. I knew, too, that I could overrule his objections. That’s a power women have when a man loves them; whether he be husband or brother or friend. I hated the thought of vice and ignorance and poverty. What if I could save just one small boy from their clutches? I said resolutely,—

“Will you go home with me, and have a comfortable home and good food and honest work, and no one ever to beat you, and learn to read?”

I had seen no assent in his eyes till I came to this last clause of my sentence. Then he asked shrewdly,—

“Who’ll teach me? I can’t go to school and do my work, too.”

“I will teach you. Will you go and work faithfully for my brother, and learn to read?”

“Won’t I, just?”

“Well, then, let me speak to the lady who went in, and I’ll take you home at once.”

He shuffled uneasily.

“If you please, marm, I can’t go till I’ve been back to Meg’s, and carried her this board.”

“But I’ll get a policeman to send a messenger with that. If you go, perhaps she won’t let you come to me.”

“Yes, marm, I shall come. But you wouldn’t believe me, sure, if I could steal away, like, and never say good-by to Mag, and let her cry both her eyes out thinking I’d been shut up, or somebody had killed me.” And his own great blue eyes grew pathetic again over this picture of sorrowful possibilities.

“Well, you may go,” I said, half reluctantly, for the little vagabond had inspired in me a singular interest. “You may go, and be sure you come to-night or in the morning, to 70 Deerham Street, and ask for Miss May.”

He looked at me with a grave, resolved look.

“I shall come,” he said; and in an instant he was gone.

That night, after dinner, I told Tom. He was mocking, incredulous, reluctant—just as I knew he would be. But it all ended in his promising to try “My Vagrant,” if he ever came.

Just as I had brought him to this pass, the bell rang, and I sprang to the dining-room door. The dining-room was the front basement, and the outside door was so near that I opened it myself. It was, indeed, my vagrant.

“I want Miss May,” he said, with the air which such a gamin puts on when he speaks to a servant,—an air which instantly subdued itself into propriety when he heard my voice.

I took him in to Tom; and I saw the blue eyes softened even the prejudiced mind and worldly heart of Mr. Thomas May. He spoke very kindly to the boy, and then sent him into the kitchen for his supper.

“Where do you propose to keep this new acquisition?” he asked me, after the blue-eyed was out of sight.

“In this house, if you please. There is a little single bed all ready for him in the attic, and I’ve arranged with cook to give him a bath and then put him into some of the clothes her own boy left behind him when he went away to sea. I mean to rescue this one soul from a starved and miserable and wicked life, and I’m willing to take some pains; and if you aren’t willing to do your part I’m ashamed of you.”

Tom laughed, and called me his “fierce little woman,” his “angry turtle-dove,” and half-a-dozen other names which he never gave me except when he was in good humor, so I knew it was all right.

Before three days were over Tom owned that my vagrant, as he persisted in calling the boy (though we knew now that his name was Johnny True), was the best errand boy he had ever employed. I myself taught him to read, as I had promised, and brighter scholar never teacher had. In four months he had progressed so fast that he could read almost any thing. There had been a sort of feverish eagerness in his desire to learn for which I was at a loss to account. Sometimes, coming home from some party or opera, I would find him studying in the kitchen at midnight.

We grew fond of him, all of us. Cook said he was no trouble, and he made it seem as if she had her own boy back again. He waited on Tom with a sort of dog-like faithfulness; and, as for me, I believe that he would have cut his hand off for me at any time.

Yet one morning he got up and deliberately walked out of the house. When his breakfast was ready cook called for him in vain, and in vain she searched for him from attic to cellar. But before it was time for Tom to go to business another boy came, a little older than my vagrant,—a nice, respectable-looking boy,—and asked for Mr. May. He came into the dining-room and stood there, cap in hand.

“If you please, sir,” he said bashfully, “Johnny True wants to know if you’ll be so good as to take me on in his place, considering that he isn’t coming back any more, and I have done errands before, and got good reference.”

He had made his little speech in breathless haste, running all his sentences together into one.

Tom looked at him deliberately, and lit a cigar.

“Johnny isn’t coming back, hey?”

“No, sir.”

“Where is Johnny gone?”

“He didn’t tell me, if you please, but he said he should be hurt to death if it troubled you to lose him, and he knew I could do as well as he could.”

I saw a refusal in Tom’s eyes, so I made haste to forestall it.

“Do take him,” I said in a low tone to Tom, and then I said to the boy that just now he had better go to the store, and Mr. May would see him presently, when he came to business.

Tom laughed, a half-amused, half-provoked laugh, when he went out, and said,—

“Well, my dear, I don’t think your vagrant has proved to be such a success that you need expect me to let him choose my next errand boy.”

“I think, at least, that if he has sent you one as good as himself you will have no fault to find,” I said hotly. But all the time there was a sore place in my own heart, for I had thought that my vagrant would have loved me too well to run away from me in this way.

That night Tom said that the new errand boy was doing well, and he had concluded to keep him on. I think Tom missed my vagrant; but not, of course, so much as I missed my bright scholar—my grateful little follower.

Of course, the new boy lived in his own home, wherever that might be. I did not concern myself about him, or feel any disposition to put him in the little bed in the front attic.

Two or three weeks passed and we heard no word from Johnny True. But at last a rainy day came, and with it Johnny, asking for Miss May.

“I guess he’s repented,” cook said, coming upstairs to tell me. I went down to Johnny, resolved to be equal to the occasion—to meet him with all the severity his ungrateful behavior deserved. But, somehow, the wistful look in his blue eyes disarmed me. He was a little thin and pale, too; and my heart began to soften even before he spoke.

“I couldn’t stay away, ma’am,” he said, with the clear accent he had caught so quickly from my brief teaching, “and not let you know why I went.”

“To let me know when you went would have been more to the purpose,” I answered, with what sternness I could command. “I had thought better of you, Johnny, than that you were capable of running away.”

“But you see, ma’am, I was afraid you would not let me go if I told you.”

“And why did you want to go? Were you not comfortable?”

“Yes, ma’am—that was the worst of it.”

“Why the worst of it? Have you any especial objection to be comfortable?”

Suddenly the blue eyes filled with tears, like a girl’s; and there was a pitiful sob in the voice which answered me.

“Oh, it hurt me so, when I was warm, and had a good supper, and everybody’s kind word, to think of poor Mag there at home, cold and hungry, and with old Meg beating her. I never should have come and left her but for the learning to read. She wanted me to come for that.”

“So you could read to her?”

“So I could teach her, ma’am. You never in all your life saw anybody so hungry to learn to read as Mag; and when I went home that first day and told her all you said, and told her that after all I couldn’t go and leave her there to take all the hard fare and hard words, she just began to cry, and to tease me to go and learn to read, so I could teach her, until I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I came.”

“And how did she know she would ever see you again?” I asked. “It would have been most natural, having learned what comfort was, to stay on here and enjoy it.”

“Mag knew me, ma’am,” said my vagrant, as proudly as a prince could speak if his honor were called in question. “Mag knew what I was, and I learned as fast as I could to get back to her—don’t you think so, ma’am?”

“You learned faster than any one else could; I know that,” I answered. “But, Johnny, how could you bear to go back to begging again?”

“I couldn’t bear it, ma’am, and I didn’t. I had money enough, that Mr. Tom had given me, to buy myself a stock of papers. I’m a newsboy now, and I teach Mag to read out of the papers I have left. And old Meg knows better now than to beat Mag, and we are so much happier. It’s all owing to you; and I came back to thank you,—but I never could forsake Mag for long. I must stay with my own.”

“But they are not your own.”

“Mag is, ma’am.”

He was as resolute to ally himself, for that girl’s sake, with poverty, and, if need were, shame, as ever was a hero to live or die for the land of his birth; and out in the rain, down the desolate street, I watched my vagrant go away from me for ever. But I did not pity him. No soul is to be pitied which has reached life’s crowning good,—the power to love another better than itself. Nor do I know any curled darling of fortune who seems to me happier than was my vagrant.