I knew all the time I wasn't going to keep grubbing a living out of an ash-bin.
I was always growing, shooting up like one of those mullein stalks out there, and eating?
Great Scott! I used to eat so much when I was a kid that mother starved herself near to death so as to give me a square meal.

By the time I was twelve I had grown so fast that I got a job at cleaning the streets--my first job from the city.

But I never went hungry.

As far as I recollect I never went hungry except the time I beat my way out to Chicago--" Without moving, without lowering her eyes from his face, Gabriella listened, while she clasped and unclasped the hands in her lap.

There is a personality that compels attention, and she realized for the first time that O'Hara possessed it.