Sam narrowed his eyes and looked Michael through, then slowly widened them again, an expression of real interest coming into them.
“Say! Do you mean it?” he asked doubtfully. “Be you straight goods? Would you come back into de gang an not snitch on us ner nothin’?”
“I’m straight goods, Sam, and I won’t snitch!” said Michael quickly. He knew that he could hope for no fellow’s confidence if he “snitched.”
“Wal, say, I’ve a notion to tell yeh!”
Sam attacked his ice cream contemplatively.
“How would a bluff game strike you?” he asked suddenly as the last delectable mouthful of cream disappeared and he pulled the fresh cup of coffee toward him that the waiter had just set down.
“What sort?” said Michael wondering what he was coming on in the way of revelation, but resolving not to be horrified at anything. Sam must not suspect until he could understand what a difference education had made in the way of looking at things.
“Wal, there’s diffrunt ways. Cripple’s purty good. Foot all tied up in bloody rags, arm an’ hand tied up, a couple o’ old crutches. I could lend the clo’es. They’d be short fer yeh, but that’d be all the better gag. We cud swap an’ I’d do the gen’lman act a while.” He looked covetously at Michael’s handsome brown tweeds—“Den you goes fom house to house, er you stands on de corner—”
“Begging!” said Michael aghast. His eyes were on his plate and he was trying to control his voice, but something of his horror crept into his tones. Sam felt it and hastened on apologetically—
“Er ef you want to go it one better, keep on yer good cloes an’ have the asthma bad. I know a feller what’ll teach you how, an’ sell you the whistles to put in yer mouth. You’ve no notion how it works. You just go around in the subbubs tellin’ thet you’ve only been out of the ’orspittal two days an’ you walked all this way to get work an’ couldn’t get it, an’ you want five cents to get back—see? Why, I know a feller—course he’s been at it fer years an’ he has his regular beats—folks don’t seem to remember—and be can work the ground over ’bout once in six months er so, and he’s made’s high’s thirty-eight dollars in a day at asthma work.”