“You would lay him in a fine, soft bed. But if he did not sleep there for want of the branches and the wind moving in them?”
Harvey was silent.
“You would give him rich food and drinks. Good! But men may starve to death with full bellies, my frien’; and if he starved so for the dawn in summer and the shantymen’s fires in the winter, and the trails of all the hills?”
Again Harvey was silent. The old man rose slowly, and lifted his basket. Harvey started. He said, passionately, “But look at what he—at what you did for me!”
Very gently the old pedlar smiled in a creasing of dim wrinkles. “He only carry the basket,” he said, softly. “It is the good God that settles what shall come out of it. For you, the fine house and the garden full of white flowers for madam to walk in. For me . . . .”
He slung the strap over his shoulder, pulled out his paper of kinnikinnick, filled and lighted the little pipe. “Good man, you,” he said, between puffs; “but there’s one thing you cannot do. You cannot give to the one that wants nothing.”
“I shan’t give up. There’s a thousand of the best waiting for you whenever you want it, anyway. When you’re older or ill my turn’ll come.”
“Per’aps.” The old figure was withdrawing from him into the shadows—infinitely alien, infinitely remote.
“Will you take nothing now?” called Harvey, as if to someone a very long way off.
The old man hesitated. Then, from the columbines nodding through the fence, he picked a single blossom. “This,” he said, “to remember.” His voice, too, was withdrawing, fading away.