Indeed Toboso was a tower of strength even against the ghosts of other days, reproachful for their long durance in oblivion.
“Oh! Well, by Jinny! I reckon you'll give us lodging, Elder,” he puffed cheerfully. He took the coincidence so pleasantly and naturally that Father Wiliston was comforted, and thought that after all it was pleasant and natural enough.
The only furniture in the room was a high-backed settle and an overturned kitchen table, with one leg gone, and the other three helplessly in the air—so it had lain possibly many years. Boston Alley drew forward the settle and threw more broken clapboards on the fire, which blazed up and filled the room with flickering cheer. Soon the three outcasts were smoking their pipes and the conversation became animated.
“When I was a boy,” said Father Wiliston—“I remember so distinctly—there were remarkable early bough apples growing in the orchard.”
“The pot's yours, Elder,” thundered To-boso. They went out groping under the old apple trees, and returned laden with plump pale green fruit. Boston Alley and the Newark Kid stretched themselves on the floor on heaps of pulled grass. Toboso and Father Wiliston sat on the settle. The juice of the bough apples ran with a sweet tang. The palate rejoiced and the soul responded. The Newark Kid did swift, cunning card tricks that filled Father Wiliston with wonder and pleasure.
“My dear young man, I don't see how you do it!”
The Kid was lately out of prison from a two years' sentence, “only for getting into a house by the window instead of the door,” as Boston Alley delicately explained, and the “flies,” meaning officers of the law, “are after him again for reasons he ain't quite sure of.” The pallor of slum birth and breeding, and the additional prison pallor, made his skin look curious where the grime had not darkened it. He had a short-jawed, smooth-shaven face, a flat mouth and light hair, and was short and stocky, but lithe and noiseless in movement, and inclined to say little. Boston Alley was a man of some slight education, who now sometimes sung in winter variety shows, such songs as he picked up here and there in summer wanderings, for in warm weather he liked footing the road better, partly because the green country sights were pleasant to him, and partly because he was irresolute and keeping engagements was a distress. He seemed agreeable and sympathetic.
“He ain't got no more real feelings 'n a fish,” said Toboso, gazing candidly at Boston, but speaking to Father Wiliston, “and yet he looks like he had 'em, and a man's glad to see him. Ain't seen you since fall, Boston, but I see the Kid last week at a hang-out in Albany. Well, gents, this ain't a bad lay.”
Toboso himself had been many years on the road. He was in a way a man of much force and decision, and probably it was another element in him, craving sloth and easy feeding, which kept him in this submerged society; although here, too, there seemed room for the exercise of his dominance. He leaned back in the settle, and had his hand on Father Wiliston's shoulder. His face gleamed redly over his bison beard.
“It's a good lay. And we're gay, Elder. Ain't we gay? Hey, Jinny!”