Poor Tom was seen less frequently than before hanging on the gate,
or sitting idly on the bench before his mother's dwelling; and when
you did find him there, as of old, you saw a different expression on
his face. Soon the children, who had only looked at him, half in
fear, from a distance, or come closer to the gate where he stood
gazing with his strange eyes out into the street, in order to worry
him, began to have a different feelings for the cripple, and one and
another stopped occasionally to speak with him; for Tom no longer
made queer faces, or looked at them wickedly, as if he would harm
them if in his power, nor retorted angrily if they said things to
worry him. And now it often happened that a little boy or girl, who
had pitied the poor cripple, and feared him at the same time, would
offer him a flower, or an apple, or at handful of nuts in passing to
school; and he would take these gifts thankfully, and feel better
all day in remembrance of the kindness with which they had been
bestowed. Sometimes he would risk to see their books, and his eyes
would run eagerly over the pages so far in advance of his
comprehension, yet with the hope in his heart of one day mastering
them; for he had grown all athirst for knowledge.

As soon as Tom could read, the children in the neighborhood, who had
grown to like him, and always gathered around him at the gate, when
they happened to find him there, supplied him with books; so that he
had an abundance of mental food, and now began to repay his
benefactor, the bedridden man, by reading to him for hours every
day.

The mind of Tom had some of this qualities of a sponge: it absorbed
a great deal, and, like a sponge, gave out freely at every pressure.