No one who met him and
looked into his fresh, rosy face, or caught the merry twinkle of
his eyes, would ever have supposed he had been pouring liniment
over broken arms and bandaged fingers until two o'clock in the
morning of the night before. It had only been when Bolton's sister
had discovered an empty "cell," as Jack called the bedroom next to
his, that he had abandoned his intention of camping out on Jack's
disheartened lounge, and had retired like a gentleman carrying
with him all his toilet articles, ready to be set out in the
morning.
Long before that time he had captured everybody in the place: from
Mrs. Hicks, who never dreamed that such a well of tenderness over
suffering could exist in an old fellow's heart, down to the
freckled-faced boy who came for his muddy shoes and who, after a
moment's talk with Peter as to how they should be polished,
retired later in the firm belief that they belonged to "a gent way
up in G," as he expressed it, he never having waited on "the likes
of him before." As to Bolton, he thought he was the "best ever,"
and as to his prim, patient sister who had closed her school to be
near her brother--she declared to Mrs.
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