“Well, yes! Yes, right at first it is. I don't say it ain't, right at first. It irked me some right at first, but I'm gettin' used to it.”
“An' don't it no more?”
“Not a mite. Mind conquers the flesh, as you may say. Want to come back an' see the stray dogs I'm takin' care of? That's my speciality—stray dogs. It's just that I love 'em an' they love me, like I was a brother to 'em. That does the business.”
He would lead the way to where three canines were chained in the junkyard.
But at night, when he was supposed to be sound asleep, and his blinds were closed, he would begin to think of food—rich, solid ham and eggs cooked in bacon fat—and he would fight with himself, and groan and roll to and fro in his bed.
“Dod-bas—no, not dod-baste; I'll take that back, it ain't saintly,” he would mutter; “but I'm hungry. I did n't know a man could git so hungry.”
Then he would get up and walk the floor.
It was wonderful that he stood it. A new spirit of resolution seemed to have entered into him. The interest that was shown in his new life by his friends and by strangers certainly was one cause of his tenacity, but even so he might have given up—as he had given up all his previous labors—had the Riverbank Eagle not written him up. The article was intended to be satirical, but satire is a serious matter for unpracticed hands to meddle with, and the article that appeared in the Eagle—headed “Riverbank Has a Hermit”—was so very delicately satirical that it did not appear to be satirical at all. Riverbank accepted it as sincere, and so did Saint Harvey, and so did papers all over the land. In a day Saint Harvey found himself not only a recognized hermit, but a famous one. The “Brother of Stray Dogs” was a national character, but he wished he was n't. He was a national celebrity, but a hungry one. Nobody knew how hungry he was. He was the hungriest man in the United States. He was just plumb, downright, miserably hungry for ham and eggs.
It was late at night, when this hunger was greatest, that Lem would come, pushing open the door, standing on the sill, and saying: “Pop, I want you to lemme come home.”
“Say! Are you here again? Did n't I tell you to keep away? You git out o' here an' go right back to your aunt.”