There's a woman who greets the newsies with her same sad song once a week. She wanders aimlessly through the boys, searching constantly for one in particular. Patrick is his name. No one ever responds to her. None of the boys know any Patrick. Well, none of them minus two. Patrick himself and a certain boy named Mush.

He saw her that morning, and did exactly what he had done for the last six years. Mush slipped to the middle of the group and nudged his blonde friend gently in the side.

"She's here," he whispered softly, just barely loud enough for the boy to hear. The same look that the boy got every time she showed up flashed across his face – sadness, but with some confusion and just a bit of relief thrown in. He slipped around the corner as Mush looked on.

'Am I doing the right thing, helping him avoid his mum?' he thought as he watched his friend slip away. But he knew his friend would take it as betrayal if Mush were to tell the wandering mother her son was there, and had been hiding and running whenever she came looking. He couldn't lose that friendship. Although what he could do was help his friend gain the courage to go home – after all, it'd been eight years.

"One paper, please." Mush held his hand out to the boy about his age, in the response to the request. The boy placed a penny in his open palm and received a slightly damp paper in return. Mush sighed, realizing only then that sitting on his stack of papes had not actually helped keep them any drier than storing them under the bench would have. He looked up from pocketing his penny and his musings and realized the boy was still standing there.

"Don't you get cold out here?" Mush rolled his eyes at the silly question.

"Sure do. But there's nothing nobody can do about it. I just gotta stand and take it like a man. That's what Rider says, anyways," he replied, secretly glad for the conversation of a boy not yet affected by social level.

"Who's Rider?" the boy asked, curiosity and awe shining from his face.

"He's the one who takes care of us newsies. Well, sort of. He's the oldest of us, and so I guess he feels sort of responsible for us or something. " He studied the boy as he explained, wondering if he'd found a friend. One who didn't care how many papers Mush sold, like all the rest of the newsies.

"The name's Mush," he said as he stuck his hand out to shake.

"I'm Patrick," the boy replied with a grin as they shook, "but you can call me Pat." Mush grinned back, and then saw one of the regulars approaching. He suggested to Pat that he run the pape back to his mum, then ask her if he could come play for a bit after Mush finished selling. Patrick agreed and ran off to deliver the paper. From that day on, the two eight year olds were rarely separated in their free time.