CHAPTER XXVI.
MRS. GINNISS HAS A VISITOR.
HEAVILY went the days in the lowly home of Mrs. Ginniss and her son.
Teddy sought early and late for employment, disdaining nothing,
however humble, whereby he might earn a few cents, and working as
diligently at street-sweeping, dust-gathering, errand-running, or
horse-holding, as he had ever done in the way of gaining an
education under the kind tuition of his late master.
Every night he brought home some small sum, and silently placed it
in his mother's hand; nor, though she urged it, would he retain a
penny for himself, or indulge in any of the small luxuries he had in
former days enjoyed so much.
"Go buy a wather-million, honey, or get an ice-crame; sure it's
nothin' at all ye're atin'," the fond mother would say: but Teddy
always shook his head, or, if the matter were urged, took his cap
and went out, always with the weary step that had become habitual to
him, and returned no more until bedtime.
"It's frettin' himsilf to his grave the crather is," said poor Mrs.
Ginniss, and tried in many a motherly way to make home pleasant to
her boy, and to re-awaken the ambition that seemed quite dead in his
heart. No more reading aloud now, of which he had been so fond; no
more recitals of interesting or humorous scenes in office or street;
no more wise opinions upon public events: all the boy's boyish
conceit and self-esteem, germs in a strong character of worthy self--
respect, seemed crushed out of him.
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