He lifted himself on his elbow, and stared around him in transient bewilderment.

“Blest if I hadn’t forgot where I was,” he said to himself.  “So this is my room, is it?  Well, it seems kind of ’spectable to have a room and a bed to sleep in.  I’d orter be able to afford seventy-five cents a week.  I’ve throwed away more money than that in one evenin’.  There aint no reason why I shouldn’t live ’spectable.  I wish I knowed as much as Frank.  He’s a tip-top feller.  Nobody ever cared enough for me before to give me good advice.  It was kicks, and cuffs, and swearin’ at me all the time.  I’d like to show him I can do something.”

While Dick was indulging in these reflections, he had risen from bed, and, finding an accession to the furniture of his room, in the shape of an ancient wash-stand bearing a cracked bowl and broken pitcher, indulged himself in the rather unusual ceremony of a good wash.  On the whole, Dick preferred to be clean, but it was not always easy to gratify his desire.  Lodging in the street as he had been accustomed to do, he had had no opportunity to perform his toilet in the customary manner.  Even now he found himself unable to arrange his dishevelled locks, having neither comb nor brush.  He determined to purchase a comb, at least, as soon as possible, and a brush too, if he could get one cheap.  Meanwhile he combed his hair with his fingers as well as he could, though the result was not quite so satisfactory as it might have been.

A question now came up for consideration.  For the first time in his life Dick possessed two suits of clothes.  Should he put on the clothes Frank had given him, or resume his old rags?

Now, twenty-four hours before, at the time Dick was introduced to the reader’s notice, no one could have been less fastidious as to his clothing than he.  Indeed, he had rather a contempt for good clothes, or at least he thought so.  But now, as he surveyed the ragged and dirty coat and the patched pants, Dick felt ashamed of them.  He was unwilling to appear in the streets with them.  Yet, if he went to work in his new suit, he was in danger of spoiling it, and he might not have it in his power to purchase a new one.  Economy dictated a return to the old garments.  Dick tried them on, and surveyed himself in the cracked glass; but the reflection did not please him.

“They don’t look ’spectable,” he decided; and, forthwith taking them off again, he put on the new suit of the day before.

“I must try to earn a little more,” he thought, “to pay for my room, and to buy some new clo’es when these is wore out.”

He opened the door of his chamber, and went downstairs and into the street, carrying his blacking-box with him.