“Don't you want the love and confidence of your neighbors, Jeffy?” he asked, pityingly.
“I ain't got no neighbors, except the bums who sleep along of me at the gas-house winter nights. I always feel this way when I come off a spree; first it seems as if I'd be willing never to touch another drop of licker as long as I lived. I just lose interest in everything, and I don't care a durn what happens to me. Why, I've joined the Church lots of times when I felt that way, but as soon as I begin to get well it's different. I am getting well now, and what I told you don't count any more. I got my own way of living.”
“But what a way!” sadly.
“Maybe it ain't your way, and maybe it ain't the best way, but it suits me bully. I can always get enough to eat by going and asking some one for it, and you can't beat that. No, sir. You know durn well you can't!” becoming argumentative. “It just makes me sick to think of paying for things like vittles and clothes. A feller's got to have clothes, anyhow, ain't he? You know mighty well he has, or he'll get pinched, and supposing I was to earn a lot of money, even as much as a dollar a day, I'd have to spend every blamed cent to live. One day I'd work, and then the next I'd swaller what I'd worked for. Where's the sense in that? And I'd have all sorts of ornery worries for fear I'd lose my job.” A look of wistful yearning overspread his face. “Just you give me the hot days that's coming, when a feller's warm clean through and sweats in the shade, and I won't ask for no money. You can have it all!”
That night, when he left him, Roger Oakley carefully locked the door and pocketed the key, and the helpless wretch on the bed, despairing and miserable, and cut off from all earthly hope, turned his face to the white wall and sobbed aloud.
CHAPTER IX
THEY were standing on the street corner before the hotel. Oakley had just come up-town from the office. He was full of awkward excuses and apologies, but Mr. Emory cut them short.
“I suppose I've a right to be angry at the way you've avoided us, but I'm not. On the contrary, I'm going to take you home to dinner with me.”