CHAPTER XVII
Again and again Lem stole from his room at night by the window route and made his way to his father's hermitage, to beg to be taken out of pawn. These visits caused Saint Harvey of Riverbank the utmost irritation.
The good Saint Harvey, Little Brother to Stray Dogs, was doing his best to live up to the task he had set himself. He was trying faithfully to mortify the flesh and to live abstemiously (on bread and water), to do without his pipe, to think high thoughts, and to be gentle and kind to all living creatures, particularly to stray dogs.
He had a double reason for trying. The news that he was in business as a saint had gone around town—for he could not keep from bragging about it—and old friends and perfect strangers dropped into the junkyard to inquire how he was progressing and to learn from his own lips how a man went about being a saint and how he liked the job.
The worst, of course, was living on bread and water alone. Every atom of his huge body seemed to cry for ham and eggs every minute, and his stomach simply yelled for ham and eggs. And that made him irritable, of course, and made it more difficult to keep from dod-basting everybody, and everything. And it made him long for his pipe, which would have been the solace that every man knows tobacco is. And then the questioners would come:
“An' say, Harvey, they say you don't eat nothin' but bread an' water. Is that so?”
“That's all. Nothin' but. It's got to be that way. Mortify the flesh, that's the idee. High thinkin' an' plain livin'. Why, there would n't be no merit in bein'' a saint if I was to go on eatin' an' drinkin' an' smokin' an' cussin' around same as everybody does an' like I used to. Bread an' water; that's the idee of it.”
“Gosh! it must be hard on a man!”