“No, Lovey,” I said decidedly, when we had got to the corner of the Park,
“it’s not good enough. I’ve other fish to fry.”
A hectic flush stole into the cheeks, which kept a marvelous youth and
freshness. The thin, delicate features, ascetic rather than degraded,
sharpened with a frosty look of disappointment.
“Well, just as you think best, sonny,” he said, resignedly. He asked,
abruptly, however, “When did ye have yer last meal?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“And when d’ye expect to have yer next?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sometime; possibly to-night.”
“Possibly to-night— ’Ow?”
“I tell you I don’t know. Something will happen. If it doesn’t—well, I’ll
manage.”
He had found an opening.
“Don’t ye see ye carn’t go on like that? Ye’ve got to live.”
“Oh no, I haven’t.”
“Don’t say that, sonny,” he burst out, tenderly. “Ye’ve got to live! Ye
must do it—for my sake—now. I suppose it’s because we’re—we’re Britishers
together.” He looked round on the circling crowd of Slavs, Mongolians,
Greeks, Italians, aliens of all sorts. “We’re different from these
Yankees, ain’t we?”
Admitting our Anglo-Saxon superiority, I was about to say, “Well, so
long, Lovey,” and shake him off, when he put in, piteously, “I suppose I
can come up and lay down on yer floor again to-night?”
“I wish you could, Lovey,” I responded. “But—but the fact is I—I haven’t
got that place any more.”
“Fired?”