Saint Harvey of Riverbank licked his lips and drew a deep, covetous breath. In his hand Lem held a thick, moist ham sandwich. He lifted one lid and straightened the ham with his finger—thick, moist ham with a strip of luscious white fat that hung tremulously over the edge of the bread.
“Aw! please, pa! Let me come back,” Lem begged, and set his teeth into the sandwich.
Saint Harvey licked his puffy lips again and heaved a second deep sigh.
The great ham sandwich barrage against the encroaching sainthood of Saint Harvey of River-bank had begun.
CHAPTER XVIII
Saint Harvey of Riverbank was not having a care-free sainthood those days. Lem came every night, sitting in the same place, pleading with his father to stop being a saint, and eating a luscious ham sandwich before his eyes. The young rascal knew what he was doing. He found a way of turning the ham slowly on the bread—so his father saw it in all its beauty—that made Saint Harvey turn red in the face and swallow hard and lick his lips greedily. There was a way in which Lem licked a forefinger after getting it moist with ham grease that was agony to Saint Harvey. And all the while Lem talked.
“Don't your aunt treat you nice?” his father would ask.
“No, she don't,” Lem would say. “She's mean to me. She makes me wash the dishes, she does. An' she's got millions of dishes. She don't care how many dishes she has. She goes an' cooks an' cooks, an' has pie an' puddin' an' roast beef an' asparagus an'—”