Though it was not a cold day, the steadiness of the drizzle chilled me. The dampness of the pavements got through the worn soles of my boots, and I suppose it did the same with Lovey’s. The lack of food made the old man white, and that of drink set him to trembling. The fact that he hadn’t shaved for the past day or two gave his sodden face a grisly look that was truly appalling. Though the pale-blue eyes were extinct, as if the spirit in them had been quenched, they were turned toward me with the piteous appeal I had sometimes seen in those of a blind dog.
It was for me to take the lead, and yet I couldn’t wholly see in what direction to take it. While I was pondering, Lovey made a variety of suggestions.
“There doesn’t seem to be nothink for it, sonny, but to go and repent for a day or two. I ’ate to do it; kind o’ deceivin’ like, it is; but they’ll let us dry ourselves and give us a feed if we ’ave a sense of sin.”
I wondered if he had in mind anything better than what I had myself.
“Where?”
He took the negative side first.
“We couldn’t go to the Saviour, because I’ve put it over on ’em twice this year already. And the ’Omeless Men won’t do nothink for ye onless you make it up in menial work.”
“I won’t try either of them,” I said, briefly.
“Don’t blame you, sonny, not a bit. Kind o’ makes a hypercrite of a man, it does. I ’ate to be a hypercrite, only when I carn’t ’elp it.”
He went on to enumerate other agencies for the raising of the fallen, of most of which he had tested the hospitality during the past few years. I rejected them as he named them, one by one. To this rejection Lovey subscribed with the unreasoning dislike all outcast men feel for the hand stretched down to them from higher up. Nothing but starvation would have forced him to any of these thresholds; and for me even starvation would not work the miracle.