ut his mouth and
what kind of a voice he had and whether he smiled when he said so and
so and whether he looked me in the eyes at that point and so on. Then
she'd say:

"Better be a little careful about him"; or "I guess you can trust him,
Billy."

Sometimes she made mistakes but that was because I hadn't reported
things to her just right. Generally I'd trust her judgment in the face
of my own.

Then Ruth led the boy's life. Every ambition he had was her ambition.
Besides that she had a dozen ambitions for him that he didn't know
anything about. And she thought and worked and schemed to make every
single one of them come true. Every trouble he had was her trouble
too. If he worried a half hour over something, she worried an hour.
Then again there were a whole lot of other troubles in connection
with him which bothered her and which he didn't know about.

Besides all these things she was busy about dressing us and feeding us
and making us comfortable. She was always cleaning our rooms and
washing our clothes and mending our socks. Then, too, she looked after
the finances and this in itself was enough for one woman to do. Then
as though this wasn't plenty she kept light-hearted for our sakes.
You'd find her singing about her work whenever you came in and always
ready with a smile and a joke. And if she herself had a headache you
had to be a doctor and a lawyer rolled in one to find it out.

So I say the least I could do was to make her trust me so thoroughly
that she'd have one less burden. And I wanted to bring up Dick in the
same way. Dick was a good boy and I'll say that he did his best.

Ruth says that if I don't tear up these last few pages, people will
think I'm silly. I'm willing so long as they believe me honest. Of
course, in a way, such details are no one's business but if I couldn't
give Ruth the credit which is her due in this undertaking, I wouldn't
take the trouble to write it all out.

Dick told his school friend what he wanted to do and asked his advice
on the best way to go at it. The latter went with him and helped him
get his license, took him down to the newspaper offices and showed him
where to buy his papers, and introduced him to the other boys. The
newsboys hadn't at that time formed a union but there was an agreement
among them about the territory each should cover. Some of the boys had
worked up a regular trade in certain places and of course it wasn't
right for a newcomer to infringe up