But morning came at last, and he was awakened from visions of delight to a more painful consciousness of his miserable condition by the sharp, chiding voice of his cruel mistress.

Slowly, with stiffened limbs and a reluctant heart did he arise, and enter upon the repulsive and hard duties of another day.
As he had not been permitted to go home, his next consolatory thought was that his mother would come out at once to see him.

This hope he clung to day after day, but he clung to it in vain.

It mattered not that, every-time the shop-door opened when he was in it, he turned with a quickened pulse to see if it were not his mother, or that he would pause and listen, when back in the house, to hear if the strange voice that came suddenly from the shop, were not the voice of her he so longed to see.

She came not; nor was any word from her brought to him.
And thus passed the whole of the severe month of January, the long and cold winter adding greatly to his other causes of suffering..