In the way of a guardian all we could see at first was a white-coated back bent behind the counter. When it straightened up it was topped by a friendly, boyish face.
Lovey leaped back, pulling me by the arm.
“That’s that very young Pyncheon I was a-tellin’ you of,” he whispered, tragically; “him what got Rollins, the plumber, out of Stinson’s. Let’s ’ook it, sonny! He won’t do us no good.”
But the boyish face had already begun to beam.
“Hel-lo, old sport! Haven’t seen you in a pair of blue moons. Put it there!”
The welcome was the more disconcerting because in the mirror behind Pyncheon I could see myself in contrast to his clean, young, manly figure. I have said I was shabby without being hideously so, but that was before I had slept a fourth night on the bare boards of a lumber-yard, to be drenched with rain in the morning. It was also before I had gone a fourth morning without shaving, and with nothing more thorough in the way of a wash than I could steal in a station lavatory. The want of food, the want of drink, to say nothing of the unspeakable anguish within, had stamped me, moreover, with something woebegone and spectral which, now that I saw it reflected in the daylight, shook me to the soul.
I never was so timid, apologetic, or shamefaced in my life as when I grasped the friendly hand stretched out to me across the counter. I had no smile to return to Pyncheon’s. I had no courtesies to exchange. Not till that minute had I realized that I was outside the system of fellowship and manhood, and that even a handshake was a condescension.
“Pyn,” I faltered, hoarsely, “I want you to take me to the Down and Out. Will you?”
“Sure I will!” He glanced at Lovey. “And I’ll take old Lovikins, too.”