“Thank you, sir,” said Clare. “May I carry your bag for you?”
If Clare had seen what then passed in Tommy’s mind, at the back of those glistening ferret-eyes of his, he would have been almost reconciled to taking the man’s advice, and getting rid of him. Tommy was saying to himself that his pal wasn’t such a duffer after all—he was on the lay for the man’s tools!
Tommy never reasoned except in the direction of cunning self-help—of fitting means and intermediate ends to the one main object of eating. It is wonderful what a sharpener of the poor wits hunger is!
“I guess I’m the abler-bodied pauper!” answered the man; and picking up the bag he had dropped at his feet while they conversed, he walked away.
There are many more generous persons among the poor than among the rich—a fact that might help some to understand how a rich man should find it hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is hard for everybody, but harder for the rich. Men who strive to make money are unconsciously pulling instead of pushing at the heavy gate of the kingdom.
“Tommy!” said Clare, in a tone new to himself, for a new sense of moral protection had risen in him, “if ever you steal anything again, either I give you a hiding, or you and I part company.”
Tommy bored his knuckles into his red eyes, and began to whimper. Again it was hard for Tommy! He had followed Clare, thinking to supply what was lacking to him; to do for him what he was not clever enough to do for himself; in short, to make an advantageous partnership with him, to which he should furnish the faculty of picking up unconsidered trifles. Tommy judged Clare defective in intellect, and quite unpractical. He was of the mind of the multitude. The common-minded man always calls the man who thinks of righteousness before gain, who seeks to do the will of God and does not seek to make a fortune, unpractical. He will not see that the very essence of the practical lies in doing the right thing.
Tommy, in a semi-conscious way, had looked to Clare to supply the strength and the innocent look, while he supplied the head and the lively fingers; and here was Clare knocking the lovely plan to pieces! He did well to be angry! But Clare was the stronger; and Tommy knew that when Clare was roused, though it was not easy to rouse him, he could and would and did fight—not, indeed, as the little coward said to himself he could fight, like a wild cat—but like a blundering hornless old cow defending her calf from a cur.
In the heart of all his selfishness, however, Tommy did a little love Clare; and his love came, not from Tommy, but from the same source as his desire for food, namely, from the God that was in Tommy, the God in whom Tommy lived and had his being with Clare. Whether Tommy’s love for Clare would one day lift him up beside Clare, that is, make him an honest boy like Clare, remained to be seen.
Finding his demonstration make no impression, Tommy took his knuckles out of his eye-holes and thrust them into his pocket-holes, turned his back on his friend, and began to whistle—with a lump of self-pity in his throat.