The glimpse which Felix had caught of these two poor, unappreciated old men, living contentedly from hand to mouth, gayly propping each other up when one or the other weakened, had strangely affected him.

If, as he reasoned, such battered hulks, stranded these many years on the dry sands of incompetency, with no outlook for themselves across the wide sea over which their contemporaries were scudding with all sails set before the wind of success--if these castaways, their past always with them and their hoped-for future forever out of their reach, could laugh and be merry, why should not he carry some of their spirit into his relations with the people among whom his lot was now thrown?
That these people had all been more than good to him, and that he owed them in return something more than common politeness now took possession of his mind.

Few such helping hands had ever been held out to him.
When they had been, the proffered palm had generally concealed a hidden motive.

Hereafter he would try to add what he could of his own to the general fund of good-fellowship and good deeds.
He would continue his nightly search--and he had not missed a single evening--but he would return earlier, so as to be able to spend an hour reading to Masie before she went to bed, or with his other friends and acquaintances of "The Avenue"-- especially with Kitty and John.

He had been too unmindful of them, getting back to his lodgings at any hour of the night, either to let himself in by his pass-key--all the lights out and everybody asleep--or to find only Kitty or John, or both, at work over their accounts or waiting up for Mike or Bobby or for one of their wagons detained on some dock.