“What’s the matter with the Down and Out?” I sprang on him, suddenly.
He groaned. “Oh, sonny! It’s just—just what I was afeared of.”
I turned and looked down into his poor, bleared, suffering old face.
“Why?”
“Because—because—oncet ye try that they’ll—they’ll never let ye go.”
“But suppose you don’t want them to let you go?”
He backed away from me. If the dead eyes could waken to expression, they did it then.
“Oh, sonny!” He shook as if palsied. “Ye don’t know ’em, my boy. I’ve summered and wintered ’em—by lookin’ on. I’ve had pals of my own—”
“And what are they doing now, those pals of your own?”