Aunt Jo’s Scrap-Bag Vol. 1

MY LITTLE GENTLEMAN.


No one would have thought of calling him so, this ragged, barefooted,
freckle-faced Jack, who spent his days carrying market-baskets for the
butcher, or clean clothes for Mrs. Quinn, selling chips, or grubbing in
the ash-heaps for cinders. But he was honestly earning his living, doing
his duty as well as he knew how, and serving those poorer and more
helpless than himself, and that is being a gentleman in the best sense
of that fine old word. He had no home but Mrs. Quinn's garret; and for
this he paid by carrying the bundles and getting the cinders for her
fire. Food and clothes he picked up as he could; and his only friend was
little Nanny. Her mother had been kind to him when the death of his
father left him all alone in the world; and when she, too, passed away,
the boy tried to show his gratitude by comforting the little girl, who
thought there was no one in the world like her Jack.

Old Mrs. Quinn took care of her, waiting till she was strong enough to
work for herself; but Nanny had been sick, and still sat about, a pale,
little shadow of her former self, with a white film slowly coming over
her pretty blue eyes. This was Jack's great trouble, and he couldn't