"By Jinks!" responded his guest, drawing his forefinger across his throat, "me tank's loaded 'way up t' here. Dat was dandy grub, de bes' I ever got."
"Can't you go something more?" asked Stearns, much gratified at the spirit in which his hospitality had been received.
"No-o, I'm 'fraid I couldn't fin' de room," said the little fellow, slowly and with an air of deep regret. "I'd like t' 'commodate yer, but me 'commodations is all took up."
"If that's the case, then," said the captain, raising his glass to inspect the icy film with which its exterior had become coated, "we'll indulge in a gentlemanly chat. You're _sure_ there's nothing else you want?"
"Well, I _smokes_," was Larry's suggestive response to this last question, "an' if youse 've got a cig'rette--"
"No, you _don't_ smoke," put in the captain with some emphasis; "at least, you don't smoke here."
"Jus' 's yer say, o' course," replied his guest. "I don't care much 'bout it--on'y I t'ought p'r'aps 'twould be sort o' comp'ny t' yer."
"Well, it wouldn't be," said Stearns, pushing his chair a trifle farther away from the table. "And now, Major, suppose you tell me something about yourself. You say you've no home--what's the reason?"
The boy took a big gulp of water, hesitated for an instant, and then--catching the kindly expression in the captain's eye--rested his elbows upon the table, and told his story: how he never had known a father; how his mother had been sent away for a long term at the women's reformatory; and how he himself had been consigned to the fostering care of an "Institution," but had managed to evade the officer who had been sent to conduct him to it.
"I s'pose I'd oughter ha' went t' de 'Home,'" admitted Larry, as he concluded his brief and pitiful life's history; "but, hones', I couldn't stan' it t' live de way dem kids does. Dey gets dere t'ree meals a day, an' has a place t' sleep--but dat's de whole of it. An' as fer fun, why, what does _dey_ know 'bout fun? Nothin'! Jus' youse look at 'em sometime, an' see what a peepy-looking lot dey is. Huh! dey ain't got no guts at all!" and with this inelegant summing-up of the moral effects of charity-rearing he dismissed as absurd any possibility of his subjecting himself to its tender mercies.