noon
BERT 'S THANKSGIVING -LSB- 14 -RSB- Bert is a manly , generous , warm-hearted fellow . Other boys will like to read how good luck began to come his way on a certain memorable Thanksgiving Day . At noon , on a dreary November day , a lonesome little fellow , looking very red about the ears and very blue about the mouth , stood kicking his heels at the door of a cheap eating house in Boston , and offering a solitary copy of a morning paper for sale to the people passing . -LSB- Footnote 14 : From `` Young Joe , '' Lothrop , Lee & Shepard Company . -RSB- But there were really not many people passing , for it was Thanksgiving Day , and the shops were shut , and everybody who had a home to go to and a dinner to eat seemed to have gone home to eat that dinner , while Bert Hampton , the newsboy , stood trying in vain to sell the last `` extry '' left on his hands by the dull business of the morning . An old man , with a face that looked pinched , and who was dressed in a seedy black coat and a much-battered stovepipe hat , stopped at the same doorway , and , with one hand on the latch , appeared to hesitate between hunger and a sense of poverty before going in .