"You do seem to have had hard luck," he remarked awkwardly. McCartney was still too overcome with emotion to reply.
"I reckon I'll have to break my rule and help you without references. I don't believe in giving, as a rule, unless you know who you are giving to."
He put his hand in his pocket.
"But I'll do it this time." He placed two quarters upon the table.
"There, half a dollar'll keep you nicely for a while. Of course, there's no use sendin' money to Rochester. Your landlady can't turn sick folks into the street, and if she does they can go to the hospital——"
He paused, startled by the look on McCartney's face, for the latter had risen like an avenging angel, white and trembling. Pointing at the two harmless coins, he cried:
"Is that your answer to the appeal of a starving man? Is that all your religion has done for you? Is that how you obey your Lord's teachings? 'Cup of cold water' indeed! Cold water! Cold water! That's what you've got instead of blood; you withered old epidermis! You miserable, dried-up apology for a human being!" He paused for breath, sweeping the room with indignant scorn.
"I know your kind! You old Christian Shylock! You bought those chromos at an auction! You took that old sideboard for a debt—yes, a debt at eighteen per cent interest. You don't pay a cent of taxes. You sing psalms and bag your trousers with kneeling on the platforms at prayer meetings and then loan out the church's money to yourself on worthless securities. You're too mean to keep a cat, for the cost of her milk. You read a penny newspaper and take books out of a circulating library. You put a petticoat on these chairs so your miserly little body won't wear out the seats."
The lean vagabond half shouted his anathema, the pallor of his face and brow darkening red from the violence of his passion. It was the very ecstasy of anger. Before it the little man with the white hair shrank into himself, diminishing into his chair, seeking moral opportunity of escape.
McCartney looked at the two coins contemptuously.