"I beg your pardon; but—but—I'd like to do something to earn a little breakfast, if—"
"That's enough!" interrupted the man. "Go work for your living, and earn it, as I have to do. Be off now, and see that you don't take any thing that don't belong to you. You tramps should be arrested. The country's overrun and ruined with you. Why don't you give up your lazy life and go to honest work like the rest of us?"
Poor Ben hastily left, and felt very bad about his reception. After a short time his mortification turned to anger, and he wished a score of times that he could have the dirty man all to himself in a quiet place for a short time. He moreover determined to get some breakfast if he had to visit every house in Easton. In fact the repulse, in a manner, did him good.
His next attempt was successful, and a hospitable housewife, after shooing her children into the house with her extended dress, gave him a very substantial repast on the back door step. She was evidently accustomed to back door guests, and said but little and asked no questions. They had ceased to be a novelty.
Thanking her in a gentlemanly manner,—something that called a look of surprise to the lady's kind face—our hero made his way to the depot, with a feeling of quiet rest in the region of his late hunger that was highly satisfactory and worth all the humiliation in the world. Who should he there discover seated on the depot steps, picking his teeth with a splinter and hugging a small bundle under his arm, but the dirty man that had refused him a breakfast. He was half inclined to go up and reproach him for his inhospitality; but thought better of the matter, and was passing on with a frown, when the dirty man looked up with a grin, and said:
"Get yer peck, pardy?"
"What?" said Ben, turning angrily upon him.
"Get your commissary filled? There, there. You needn't be angry at me. There wasn't enough for two—I swar there wasn't. I'd invited you in if thur hed been."
"Why you confounded puppy, you are nothing but a tramp yourself, then!" exclaimed Ben in indignant astonishment.
"Incourse," coolly replied the dirty man; "I never 'lowed I wus any thing else." And he grinned again.