For Pinney's sake, his visitor summoned up the phantom of past gayety. She shook, first her finger and then her little fist at him, upbraiding him in quaintly accented English, while he lay and visibly worshiped.
“You haf sayed that you will go straight. An' now voilà you, wit' your pro-mess broke an' a stick in your estomac.”
“Yessum,” said Pinney the Rat.
“That learn you something? That learn you to be'ayve?”
“Yessum,” assented that murderous gangster like an abashed schoolboy.
“You give me your han' now that you be a good boy an' go no more wit' les Apaches an' get you a job?”
The Rat's face hardened. He squirmed away from those clear eyes. “I got one little account to square up,” he muttered. “After that if I make my getaway, I'll join the Salvationists if you tell me to. An' say, Miss Tony, you know them cigs you useta gimme? Them with the dinky letters on?”
The girl's trembling hand went to her throat. She looked at him strangely.
“If I could get a handful o' them,” he continued shyly, “they—I—it'd kinda remind me when—when you ain't here. How's me unknown friend on the outside that useta send'em in?”
Miss Tony leaned her head against the wall and burst into a passion of tears. I led her out, still sobbing, while the ex-Men's Surgical No. 7 sat up in his bed and cursed himself with wild, blasphemous, wondering oaths.