The latent sympathy in my tone touched his heart. He left his seat, and,
coming to mine, edged in past me; and, putting his head out of the window,
read the sentence aloud in a contemptuous tone. Then he offered me a
peanut, which I took; and he proceeded to tell me what he thought of the
sign.

"Boys not allowed!" said he. "That's just the way 'tis everywhere; but I
never saw the sign up before. It don't make any difference, though,
whether they put the sign up or not. Why, in New York (you live in New
York, don't you?) they won't even stop the horse-cars for a boy to get on.
Nobody thinks any thing'll hurt a boy; but they're glad enough to 'allow'
us when there's any errands to be done, and"--

"Do you live in New York?" interrupted I; for I did not wish to hear the
poor little fellow's list of miseries, which I knew by heart beforehand
without his telling me, having been hopeless knight-errant of oppressed
boyhood all my life.

Yes, he "lived in New York," and he "went to a grammar school," and he had
"two sisters." And so we talked on in that sweet, ready, trustful talk
which comes naturally only from children's lips, until the "twenty minutes
for refreshments" were over, and the choked and crammed passengers, who
had eaten big dinners in that breath of time, came hurrying back to their
seats. Among them came the father and mother of my little friend. In angry
surprise at not finding him in the seat where they left him, they
exclaimed,--

"Now, where _is_ that boy? Just like him! We might have lost every one of
these bags."