“Assist a poor man to what?” asked Henry Speny, returning his handkerchief to his pocket and looking scornfully at the Tramp.
He was a fat, healthy Tramp, in good condition. Henry Speny hardened his heart.
“Dime!” replied the Tramp; “dime to get somethin' to eat.”
“No,” said Henry Speny shortly; “I'm a half dozen meals behind the game myself.”
This last was only Henry Speny's humour. Mrs. Speny fed him twice a day. But Henry Speny knew that the Tramp wanted the dime for whiskey.
“Well! if you don't think I want it to chew on,” said the Tramp, “jest' take me to a bakery and buy me a loaf of bread. I'll get away with it right before you.”
“Say!” remarked Henry Speny, in a spirit of sarcastic irritation, “what's the use of your talking to me? There's the Charity Woodyard in this town, where, if you were really hungry, you would go and saw wood for something to eat. You can get two meals and a bed for sawing one-sixteenth of a cord of wood.”
“You can't saw wood with no such fin as this, podner!” said the Tramp; and pulling up his coat sleeve he displayed to Henry Speny an arm as withered as a dead tree. “The other's all right,” he continued, restoring his coat sleeve; “but wot's one arm in a catch-as-catch-can racket with a bucksaw?”
Henry Speny was conscience-stricken, but he would defeat the Tramp in his efforts to buy whiskey.
“I'll go down to the woodyard and saw your wood myself,” said Henry Speny.