"I brought some with me, and just got through eating it when you came
along."

"And where do you expect to get any dinner?" pursued his questioner, who
was evidently not a little puzzled by the answers he received.

"I don't know," returned Paul.

His companion looked not a little confounded at this view of the matter,
but presently a bright thought struck him.

"I shouldn't wonder," he said, shrewdly, "if you were running away."

Paul hesitated a moment. He knew that his case must look a little
suspicious, thus unexplained, and after a brief pause for reflection
determined to take the questioner into his confidence. He did this the
more readily because his new acquaintance looked very pleasant.

"You've guessed right," he said; "if you'll promise not to tell anybody,
I'll tell you all about it."

This was readily promised, and the boy who gave his name as John
Burgess, sat down beside Paul, while he, with the frankness of
boyhood, gave a circumstantial account of his father's death, and the
ill-treatment he had met with subsequently.

"Do you come from Wrenville?" asked John, interested. "Why, I've got
relations there. Perhaps you know my cousin, Ben Newcome."

"Is Ben Newcome your cousin? O yes, I know him very well; he's a
first-rate fellow."

"He isn't much like his father."

"Not at all. If he was"--

"You wouldn't like him so well. Uncle talks a little too much out of
the dictionary, and walks so straight that he bends backward. But I say,
Paul, old Mudge deserves to be choked, and Mrs. Mudge should be obliged
to swallow a gallon of her own soup. I don't know but that would be
worse than choking. I wouldn't have stayed so long if I had been in your
place."

"I shouldn't," said Paul, "if it hadn't been for Aunt Lucy."

"Was she an aunt of yours?"

"No, but we used to call her so, She's the best friend I've got, and I
don't know but the only one," said Paul, a little sadly.

"No, she isn't," said John, quickly; "I'll be your friend, Paul.
Sometime, perhaps, I shall go to New York, myself, and then I will come
and see you. Where do you expect to be?"

"I don't know anything about the city," said Paul, "but if you come, I
shall be sure to see you somewhere. I wish you were going now."

Neither Paul nor his companion had much idea of the extent of the great
metropolis, or they would not have taken it so much as a matter of
course that, being in the same place, they should meet each other.

Thei