How Roger Came Back Again by Harriet Myrtle

One summer day a rosy-cheeked country girl was walking along the busy streets of a crowded city. Once or twice she had asked her way, and her last direction made her turn into a narrow lane, and then into a narrower court. A few minutes before, she had been admiring the gay shop windows; now, she had to hold her breath, the air was so dreadfully bad, and to pick her way among black pools and gutters. No fresh breezes, no sunshine, could get in there, and all the poor little children that lived in the dirty houses round looked pale and ill. The young woman asked for No. 10; and when she he had found it she inquired for Roger Block, and was shewn into a room where there seemed to be a number of people and children crowded together almost in the dark. Roger was her little brother, and she knew his face among them all, long as it was since she had seen him, and sickly as he looked.

The poor Irish people he was with had taken him in when his mother died and he was left friendless, and had given him a share of their scanty stock of food and their little room, though there were a man and his wife, six children, and an old grandfather, with only that one dark room to live in. He was now to go with his sister Nancy to the farm where she was servant: her kind master had asked him. Roger was a grave, quiet boy. He bid his friends good-bye without showing much sorrow; but Nancy's eyes overflowed as she thanked them for their goodness, and helped the woman to make Roger's face as clean as half a pint of muddy water could make it, and to smooth down his shabby pinafore. He had no packing to do, for the clothes he wore were all he had; so he took his sister by the hand, and they went together to the inn where the wagon that brought her to the town had put up, and started for the farm in it before night.