Charley smiled in a distant sort of way. "Where I came from, when we weren't paid for our work we always stopped to consider our health—and the weather. I don't want a great deal. I put it to you honestly. Do you want me? If you do, will you give me enough to live on—enough to buy a suit of clothes a year, to pay for food and a room? If I work for you for nothing, I have to live on others for nothing, or kill myself as you're doing."
There was no answer at once, and Charley went on: "I came to you because
I saw you wanted help badly. I saw that you were hard-pushed and sick—"
"I wasn't sick," interrupted the tailor with a snarl.
"Well, overworked, which is the same thing in the end. I did the best I could: I gave you my hands—awkward enough they were at first, I know, but—"
"It's a lie. They weren't awkward," churlishly cut in the tailor.
"Well, perhaps they weren't so awkward, but they didn't know quite what to do—"
"You knew as well as if you'd been taught," came back in a growl.
"Well, then, I wasn't awkward, and I had a knack for the work. What was more, I wanted work. I wanted to work at the first thing that appealed to me. I had no particular fancy for tailoring—you get bowlegged in time!"—the old spirit was fighting with the new—"but here you were at work, and there I was idle, and I had been ill, and some one who wasn't responsible for me—a stranger-worked for me and cared for me. Wasn't it natural, when you were playing the devil with yourself, that I should step in and give you a hand? You've been better since—isn't that so?" The tailor did not answer.
"But I can't go on as we are, though I want only enough to keep me going," Charley continued.
"And if I don't give you what you want, you'll leave?"