The man rolled over on his back and sleepily blinked at him. “That I am, sir. If you’d hear the different stories I tell to charitable ladies, you’d fall down in a fit. They’re too funny for words.”
Bonny was staring at him with wide-open eyes. He had never spoken to a tramp before in his life. If he saw one on the right side of the street, he immediately crossed to the left.
“I say,” he began, with a fastidious curl of his lip, “it must be mighty queer not to know in the morning where you are going to lay your head at night. Queer, and mighty uncomfortable.”
“So it is, young man, till you get used to it,” responded the tramp, amiably.
Bonny’s countenance expressed the utmost disdain, and suddenly the tramp raised himself on an elbow. “Can you think of me, my fine lad, young and clean and as good-looking as you are?”
“No, I can’t,” said Bonny, frankly.
“Fussy about my tailor,” continued the man. “Good heavens, just think of it—I, bothering about the cut of my coat. But I was, and I did, and I’ve come down to be a trailer over the roads.”
“How can persons take a jump like that?” said the boy, musingly.
“It isn’t a jump,” pursued the tramp, lazily, “it’s a slide. You move a few inches each day. I’m something of a philosopher, and I often look back on my career. I’ve lots of time to think, as you may imagine. Now, gentlemen, you wouldn’t imagine where my slide into trampdom began.”