`` Gee , ai n't it a beauty ! '' said Tommy admiringly . `` It looks ` sif it was alive , and it 's as big as a baby . I must go an ' bring Bessie to see it . '' Tommy at once hurried away to the shabby little street where what he called `` home '' was . Tommy 's home was a very homeless-looking sort of place . It was the smallest , dingiest , most slatternly house on a street noted for its dingy and slatternly houses . It was occupied by a slatternly mother and a drunken father , as well as by Tommy ; and neither the father nor the mother took much notice of Tommy except to scold or nag him . So it is hardly to be wondered at if Tommy was the sort of boy who was frowned upon by respectable citizens . But one little white blossom of pure affection bloomed in the arid desert of Tommy 's existence for all that . In the preceding fall a new family had come to Arundel and moved into the tiny house next to the Puffers ' . It was a small , dingy house , just like the others , but before long a great change took place in it . The new family were thrifty , industrious folks , although they were very poor . The little house was white-washed , the paling neatly mended , the bit of a yard cleaned of all its rubbish . Muslin curtains appeared in the windows , and rows of cans , with blossoming plants , adorned the sills . There were just three people in the Knox family -- a thin little mother , who went out scrubbing and took in washing , a boy of ten , who sold newspapers and ran errands -- and Bessie . Bessie was eight years old and walked with a crutch , but she was a smart little lassie and kept the house wonderfully neat and tidy while her mother was away . The very first time she had seen Tommy she had smiled at him sweetly and said , `` Good morning . '' From that moment Tommy was her devoted slave . Nobody had ever spoken like that to him before ; nobody had ever smiled so at him .
Tommy would have given his useless little life XXXXX Bessie , and thenceforth the time he was not devising mischief he spent in bringing little pleasures into her life .
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