Explore "What Happened to Tad" by Mary E. Ropes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"THEN all that I've done is wuss than lost," said Tad to himself as he walked slowly away from the hospital where he had left his little brother. "I've run away on the sly and walked all night; I've carried off a sick child as can't be no good to me; I've broke with Phil and with the gipsies; and all for what? To stay here and starve in the streets while maybe the child dies in the hospital, and if he do die, why then good-bye to any home-goin' at all. Just my luck I can't seem to compass nothing at all, I can't."
That night he slept under an old boat which was turned on its side awaiting repairs on the shore, above high-water mark. A more unhappy lad it would have been hard to find under God's great canopy of sky than Tad when he awoke next morning, cold, hungry, with a remorseful conscience and an anxious heart. After buying a small loaf of bread which was to last him all day, he walked down to the quay, which he had good cause to remember, for it was here he had first met Renard. But the thought of old Foxy was not uppermost in his mind as he sauntered round, looking idly about him at the varied shipping, and at the busy crowd loading and unloading the vessels. His wretched experiences with his late master seemed to him now something very remote, almost forgotten in the nearness of his more recent troubles.