The move to Boston was made during August, so that they might be settled in time for the opening of the schools. The flitting was with the ease of the obscure. Also with the ease of the obscure, Lemuel changed his name to George, while Tom Quidmore became again Tom Whitelaw. There were reasons to justify these decisions on the part of both.
"Got into trouble onst in Boston under the name of Lemuel, and if any old sneeper was to look me up.... Not but what Lemuel isn't a more aristocraticker name than George; but there's times when somethink what no one won't notice'll suit you best. So I'll be George Honeybun, a pal o' yer father's, what left yer to me on his dyin' deathbed."
The name of Tom Whitelaw was resumed on grounds both sentimental and prudential. In the absence of any other tie to the human race, it was something to the boy to know that he had had a father. His father had been a Whitelaw; his grandfather had been a Whitelaw; there was a whole line of Whitelaws back into the times when families first began to be known by names. A slim link with a past, at least it was a link. The Quidmore name was no link at all; it was disconnection and oblivion. It signified the ship that had never had a port. As a Whitelaw, he had sailed from somewhere, even though the port would forever be unknown to him.
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It was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his traces. In the unlikely event of the State of New York busying itself with the fate of its former ward, the name of Quidmore would probably be used. A well-behaved Tom Whitelaw, living with his next of kin, and attending school in Boston according to the law, would have the best chance of going unmolested.
They found a lodging, cheap, humble, but sufficient, on that northern slope of Beacon Hill which within living memory has more than once changed hands with the silent advance and recession of a tide coming in and going out. There are still old people who can remember when some of the worthiest of the sons of the Puritans had their windows, in these steep and narrow streets, brightened by the rising or the setting sun. Then, with an almost ghostly furtiveness, they retired as the negro came and routed them. The negro seemed fixed in possession when the Hebrew stole on silently, and routed him. At the time when George Honeybun and Tom Whitelaw came looking for a home, the ancient inhabitant of the land was beginning to creep back again, and the Hebrew taking flight. In a red-brick house of forbidding expression in Grove Street they found a room with two beds.
Within a few days Honey, whose strength was his skill, was working as a stevedore on the Charlestown docks. Tom was picking up small jobs about the markets. By September he had passed his examinations and had entered the Latin School. A new life had begun. From the old life no pursuit or interference ever followed them.
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The boy shot up. In the course of a year he had grown out of most of his clothes. To the best of his modest ability, Honey was generous with new ones. He was generous with everything. That Tom should lack nothing, he cut down his own needs till he seemed to have none but the most elemental. Of his "nice times" in New York nothing had followed him to Boston but a love of spirits and tobacco. Of the two, the spirits went completely. When Tom's needs were pressing the supply of tobacco diminished till it sometimes disappeared. If on Sundays he could venture over the hill, to listen to the band on the Common, or stroll with the boy in the Public Gardens, it was because the Sunday suit, bought in the days when he had no one to provide for but himself, was sponged and pressed and brushed and mended, with scrupulous devotion. The motive of so much self-denial puzzled Tom, since, so far as he could judge, it was not affection.
He was old enough now to perceive that affection had inspired most of his good fortune. People were disposed to like him for himself. There was rarely a teacher who did not approve of him. By the market men, among whom he still picked up a few dollars on Saturdays and in vacations, he was always welcomed heartily. In school he never failed to hold his own till the boys discovered that his father, or uncle, or something, was a stevedore, after which he was ignored. Girls regarded him with a hostile interest, while toward them he had no sentiments of any kind. He could go through a street and scarcely notice that there was a girl in it, and yet girls wouldn't leave him
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 alone. They bothered him with overtures of friendship to which he did not respond, or tossed their heads at him, or called him names. But in general the principle was established that he could be liked.
But Honey was an enigma. Love was apparently not the driving power urging him to these unexpected fulfillments. If it was, it had none of the harmless dog-and-puppy ways which Tom had grown accustomed to. Honey never pawed him, as the masters often pawed the boys, and the boys pawed one another. He never threw an arm across his shoulder, or called him by a more endearing name than Kiddy. Apart from an eagle-eyed solicitude, he never manifested tenderness, nor asked for it. That Tom would ever owe him anything he didn't so much as hint at. "Dooty o' next o' kin" was the blanket explanation with which he covere............