Always it ended in Lem coaxing again to be taken out of pawn. He would sit in the shanty snivelling, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand after he had run out of words, but always his father sent him away again, back to Miss Susan. He ordered him out of the shanty sternly enough, but after Lem had closed the door, going out into the night reluctantly, Saint Harvey could not forget him. He worked off his irritation by whanging his pillow around the room, kicking it when it fell to the floor, until he was nearly exhausted, and then he would settle himself in his bed and, grumbling at first, read—his dime novels!
The truth was that, much as he scolded about them, he welcomed the nocturnal visits of the boy, even if they did irritate him (or because they did), and during the long, saintly days when he sat in his hickory rocker reading his “Lives of the Saints,” he became hungrily homesick for Lem. He missed him.
Now and then, too, Saint Harvey had a qualm. Now and then the thought came to him that he was being a saint because there was no heavy work connected with the job, and he had occasionally a guilty feeling that he had put Lem in pawn to be rid of him. He was not very happy. When he thought such thoughts he had second thoughts—that he was thinking such anti-saint thoughts because he was finding the saint business harder than the junk business.
He did not relish a form of martyrdom that came with his saintship, either. It took the form of small boys, who love to annoy saints, hermits, and other odd characters. They began throwing clods at him from a safe distance, chanting in chorus:
“Holy saint! Holy saint!
Wishes he was, but knows he ain't!”
Saint Harvey was learning that saints are not canonized for nothing. They thoroughly earn their places in the estimation of their admiration.
Lem, after an unusually hard day with Miss Susan, came one night to the hermitage of Saint Harvey with his usual plea to be taken back.
“No, Lem,” his father said patiently, “I ain't going to take you. I can't, Lem. I got to stick at this saint job now. And I can't, anyhow. I ain't got the money to pay your aunt, and you've got to stay until—”
From his pocket Lem drew something thick and square, wrapped in paper. He was sitting where he always sat, and he cast a glance out of the comers of his eyes at his father as he slowly unwrapped the paper.
“Aw! please let me come back!” he begged, and dropped the paper on the floor.