“I don’t quite see what your difficulty is.”
“By what you tell me, it’s easier to break into a swell Fifth Avenue Club than into this place.”
“Except for those having the vested right, as your wife has.”
“And this sexton-guy handles the concession for—he’s got the say-so,” he corrected himself hastily—“on who goes in and who stays out. Is that right?”
“Substantially.”
“And he’d rather keep ’em out than let ’em in?”
“Bartholomew,” I explained, “considers that the honor of God’s Acre is in his keeping. He has a fierce sort of jealousy about it, as if he had a proprietary interest in the place.”
“I get you!” Mr. Hines’s corded throat worked painfully. “You don’t suppose the old goat would slip Min a blackball?” he gulped.
“How can he? As an ‘Inalienable’—”
“Yeh; I know. But wasn’t there something about a clean record? I’ll tell you, Dominie”—Mr. Hines’s husky but assured voice trailed away into a miserable, thick whisper—“as to what he said—about her feet taking hold on hell—I guess there was a time—I guess about one more slip—I guess I didn’t run across her any too quick. But there never was a straighter, truer girl than Min was with me. I gotta get her planted right, Dominie. I gotta do it,” he concluded with pathetic earnestness.