."

Theodore promised again, and finally walked with the old lady down the
long bewildering store to the very door, and bowed her out, she meantime
looking very happy and hopeful.

Being familiar of old with the habits of the Euclid House, Theodore
chose next day the hour when he judged that Tommy would be most at
leisure, and sought him out. The landlord was a trifle grayer, decidedly
more portly, but was in other respects the same smooth-tongued, affable
host that he was when Tode Mall ran hither and thither to do his
bidding. Theodore attempted nothing with him further than to beg a few
minutes' chat with Tommy. He was directed to the identical little room
with its patch of red and yellow carpet, upon which he found Tommy
seated, mending a hole in his jacket pocket.

"So you're a tailor, are you?" asked Theodore, cheerily, seating himself
familiarly on one corner of the little bed, and having a queer feeling
come over him that the room belonged to him, and that Tommy was quite
out of place sitting on his piece of carpet.

The young tailor looked up and laughed good-humoredly.

"Queer tailor I'd make!" he said, gaily. "Mother, she does them jobs for
me generally, but this is a special occasion. I've lost ten cents and a
jack-knife to-day, and I reckoned it was time for me to go to work."

"I used to live here," said Theodore, confidentially. "This was my room.
I used to have the table in that corner though, and I've always intended
to come back here and have a look at the old room, but I never have
until this afternoon."

Tommy suspended his work, and took a good long look at his visitor
before he asked his next question.

"Be you the chap who made the row about the bottles?"

"The very chap, I suspect," answered Theodore, laughing.

Tommy sewed away energetically before he exploded his next remark.

"I wish you had _rowed_ them out of this house, I vum I do. Mother, she
don't give me no peace of my life with talkings and cryings, and one
thing and another, and a fellow don't know what to do."

The subject was fairly launched at last quite naturally, and what was
better still, by Tommy himself; and then ensued a long and earnest
conversation--and in proof that the visit had been productive of one
effect that the mother had hoped for and prophesied, Tommy stood up and
fixed earnest, admiring eyes on his visitor as he was about to leave,
and said eagerly:

"There isn't much a fellow couldn't do to please