His father had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lad's place in some office.

A long-worn suit that one; rusty and threadbare before it was laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last.

Poor woman! We could imagine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal, and the refusal of her own small portion, that her hungry boy might have enough.
Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth mingled sometimes with the thought, almost too acute to bear, that as he grew to be a man his old affection might cool, old kindnesses fade from his mind, and old promises be forgotten--the sharp pain that even then a careless word or a cold look would give her--all crowded on our thoughts as vividly as if the very scene were passing before us.
These things happen every hour, and we all know it; and yet we felt as much sorrow when we saw, or fancied we saw--it makes no difference which--the change that began to take place now, as if we had just conceived the bare possibility of such a thing for the first time.

The next suit, smart but slovenly; meant to be gay, and yet not half so decent as the threadbare apparel; redolent of the idle lounge, and the blackguard companions, told us, we thought, that the widow's comfort had rapidly faded away.

We could imagine that coat--imagine! we could see it; we _had_ seen it a hundred times--sauntering in company with three or four other coats of the same cut, about some place of profligate resort at night.
We dressed, from the same shop-window in an instant, half a dozen boys of from fifteen to twenty; and putting cigars into their mouths, and their hands into their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down the street, and lingered at the corner, with the obscene jest, and the oft-repeated oath.