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In fact there was as much pride in his face as there had ever been in hers. But, not noticing him, she said to her father: "Here is a specimen. Look where this picture is hung. In bootblack corner I should term it. It would not sell here in a thousand years, for what little light there is would be obscured much of the time by somebody's big boots and the artist in charge.
"The boy seems a very kind and respectable boy," said Jane, who had been quite won by Dodger's kindness to her young mistress. "He may be respectable, though I am not so sure of that; but his position in life is very humble. He is probably a bootblack; a singular person to select for the friend of a girl like Florence."
He had begun life as a street-waif, a newsboy and bootblack; and once when he was ill, he had gone to a drug-store for help, and the druggist had given him a poison by mistake, so that all his life thereafter he had more sick days than well.
The health-officer's tug ranged alongside for a moment, our purser handed the lawful three-dollar permit fee to the health-officer's bootblack, who passed us a folded paper in a forked stick, and away we went. The entire "inspection" did not occupy thirteen seconds. The health-officer's place is worth a hundred thousand dollars a year to him.
A closer inspection of the two ebony blackamoors, with drawn scimitars, who guarded the royal chair at the head of the table, would have revealed the fact that they were not made of ebony at all, but of veritable flesh and blood the blackamoor on the right being none other than Black Sam, the bootblack who shined shoes on the corner of the avenue, and his bloodthirsty pal on the left the kinky-haired porter who served the grocer next door; the only "HONEST" thing about either of them, to quote Waller, being the artistic clothes that they stood in.
"You know the old saying that a uniform has made many a hero of a bootblack." "Goodness, I hope you aren't a bootblack," said Mollie from her car, where she was "doing things" with the engine. "I'm not," answered Roy, adding with a grin, "Nothing half so honest."
That will give you a chance to spend Sunday at home, and you need not go to work till Tuesday." Grant expressed his gratitude in suitable terms, and left the office elated at his good fortune. A surprise awaited him. At the junction of Wall and New Streets he came suddenly upon a large-sized bootblack, whose face looked familiar. "Tom Calder!" he exclaimed. "Is that you?"
"It wasn't I, oh, indeed it wasn't I!" declared Freddy. "I told Tad Dan was the biggest, strongest, finest fellow in the whole bunch. I never said a word about his being a newsboy or a bootblack, though I don't think it hurts him a bit." "And it doesn't," said Jim, whose blood had been a "true blue" stream before the Stars and Stripes began to wave. "But there are some folks that think so."
That boot don't look as well as the other." Jim unsuspiciously allowed the boy to complete his work, but he had occasion to regret it. The bootblack hastily rubbed his brush in the mud on the sidewalk and daubed it on one of Jim's boots, quite effacing the shine. "There, that'll do," he said, and, scrambling to his feet, ran round the corner.
The gentleman was so pleased with the lad's honesty, that he went with him to see his mother, and offered to adopt him, as he needed such a boy. The mother consented, and the honest bootblack had after that a good home. He was given a good education, and, when a man, became a partner in the gentleman's large business.
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