"Well, I ain't that kind," he rushed on.
"I'm no good. I'm a tramp. I don't want to work, that's what. And I like dirt."
Her face was eloquent with reproach as she said, "Then you were only making believe when you wished you had a little girl like me?"
This left him speechless, for he knew, in all the deeps of his new-found passion, that that was just what he did want.
With ready tact, noting his discomfort, she sought to change the subject.
"What do you think of God?" she asked.
"I ain't never met him. What do you think about him?"
His reply was evidently angry, and she was frank in her disapproval.
"You are very strange," she said. "You get angry so easily. I never saw anybody before that got angry about God, or work, or being clean."
"He never done anything for me," he muttered resentfully. He cast back in quick review of the long years of toil in the convict camps and mines. "And work never done anything for me neither."