“You don’t mean to say you’re not going to work to-day, and this suit of clothes promised for to-morrow night--for the Manor House too!”
With a piece of chalk Charley idly made heads on brown paper. “After all, why should clothes be the first thing in one’s mind--when they are some one else’s! It’s a beautiful day outside. I’ve never felt the sun so warm and the air so crisp and sweet--never in all my life.”
“Then where have you lived?” snapped out the tailor with a sneer. “You must be a Yankee--they have only what we leave over down there!”--he jerked his head southward. “We don’t stop to look at weather here. I suppose you did where you come from?”
Charley smiled in a distant sort of way. “Where I came from, when we weren’t paid for our work we always stopped to consider our health--and the weather. I don’t want a great deal. I put it to you honestly. Do you want me? If you do, will you give me enough to live on--enough to buy a suit of clothes a year, to pay for food and a room? If I work for you for nothing, I have to live on others for nothing, or kill myself as you’re doing.”
There was no answer at once, and Charley went on: “I came to you because I saw you wanted help badly. I saw that you were hard-pushed and sick--”
“I wasn’t sick,” interrupted the tailor with a snarl.
“Well, overworked, which is the same thing in the end. I did the best I could: I gave you my hands--awkward enough they were at first, I know, but--”
“It’s a lie. They weren’t awkward,” churlishly cut in the tailor.
“Well, perhaps they weren’t so awkward, but they didn’t know quite what to do--”
“You knew as well as if you’d been taught,” came back in a growl.
“Well, then, I wasn’t awkward, and I had a knack for the work. What was more, I wanted work. I wanted to work at the first thing that appealed to me. I had no particular fancy for tailoring--you get bowlegged in time!”--the old spirit was fighting with the new--“but here you were at work, and there I was idle, and I had been ill, and some one who wasn’t responsible for me--a stranger-worked for me and cared for me. Wasn’t it natural, when you were playing the devil with yourself, that I should step in and give you a hand? You’ve been better since--isn’t that so?” The tailor did not answer.