on me.
'What a sickening sensation that is, when one is in trouble, to wake up
feeling free for a moment, and then to find yesterday's sorrow all ready
to go on again!

"'Well, little messmate, how fares it?"

I was too much depressed to reply. The thought of returning to
Rivermouth chilled me. How could I face Captain Nutter, to say nothing
of Miss Abigail and Kitty? How the Temple Grammar School boys would look
at me! How Conway and Seth Rodgers would exult over my mortification!
And what if the Rev. Wibird Hawkins should allude to me in his next
Sunday's sermon?

Sailor Ben was wise in keeping an eye on me, for after these thoughts
took possession of my mind, I wanted only the opportunity to give him
the slip.

The keeper of the lodgings did not supply meals to his guests; so we
breakfasted at a small chophouse in a crooked street on our way to the
cars. The city was not astir yet, and looked glum and careworn in the
damp morning atmosphere.

Here and there as we passed along was a sharp-faced shop-boy taking down
shutters; and now and then we met a seedy man who had evidently spent
the night in a doorway. Such early birds and a few laborers with their
tin kettles were the only signs of life to be seen until we came to the
station, where I insisted on paying for my own ticket. I didn't relish
being conveyed from place to place, like a felon changing prisons, at
somebody else's expense.

On entering the car I sunk into a seat next the window, and Sailor Ben
deposited himself beside me, cutting off all chance of escape.

The car filled up soon after this, and I wondered if there was anything
in my mien that would lead the other passengers to suspect I was a boy
who had run away and was being brought back.

A man in front of us--he was near-sighted, as I discovered later by his
reading a guide-book with his nose--brought the blood to my cheeks by
turning round and peering at me steadily. I rubbed a clear spot on the
cloudy window-glass at my elbow, and looked out to avoid him.

There, in the travellers' room, was the severe-looking young lady piling
up her blocks of sponge-cake in alluring pyramids and industriously
intrenching herself behind a breastwork of squash-pie. I saw with
cynical pleasure numerous victims walk up to the counter and recklessly
sow the seeds of death in their constitutions by eating her doughnuts. I
had got quite interested in her, when the whistle sounded and the train
began to move.