The rosy lady 's smiles and taffy -- the smiles much more than the taffy -- went far to thaw out of him a certain hardness and resentfulness against people in general that Aunt Harriet 's harsh treatment had instilled into him . Chester instantly made a resolve that when he grew stout and rosy and prosperous he would dispense smiles and taffy and good cheer generally to all forlorn small boys on boats and trains . It was almost dark when they reached Montrose . Chester lost sight of the rosy lady when they left the boat , and it gave him a lonesome feeling ; but he could not indulge in that for long at a time . Here he was at his destination -- at dark , in a strange city a hundred miles from home . `` The first thing is to find somewhere to sleep , '' he said to himself , resolutely declining to feel frightened , although the temptation was very strong . Montrose was not really a very big place . It was only a bustling little town of some twenty thousand inhabitants , but to Chester 's eyes it was a vast metropolis . He had never been in any place bigger than Belltown , and in Belltown you could see one end of it , at least , no matter where you were . Montrose seemed endless to Chester as he stood at the head of Water Street and gazed in bewilderment along one of its main business avenues -- a big , glittering , whirling place where one small boy could so easily be swallowed up that he would never be heard of again . Chester , after paying his fare to Montrose and buying his cheese and crackers , had just sixty cents left . This must last him until he found work , so that the luxury of lodgings was out of the question , even if he had known where to look for them . To be sure , there were benches in a public square right in front of him ; but Chester was afraid that if he curled up on one of them for the night , a policeman might question him , and he did not believe he could give a very satisfactory account of himself . In his perplexity , he thought of his cosy lumber pile at Roxbury Station and remembered that when he had left the boat he had noticed a large vacant lot near the wharf which was filled with piles of lumber . Back to this he went and soon succeeded in finding a place to stow himself . His last waking thought was that he must be up and doing bright and early the next morning , and that it must surely be longer than twenty-four hours since he had crept downstairs and out of Aunt Harriet 's porch window at Upton . * * * * * Montrose seemed less alarming by daylight , which was not so bewildering as the blinking electric lights . Chester was up betimes , ate the last of his cheese and crackers and started out at once to look for work . He determined to be thorough , and he went straight into every place of business he came to , from a blacksmith 's forge to a department store , and boldly asked the first person he met if they wanted a boy there . There was , however , one class of places Chester shunned determinedly .
He never went XXXXX a liquor saloon .
To at from in into near of on than until