“Where?”
He took the negative side first.
“We couldn’t go to the Saviour, because I’ve put it over on ’em twice
this year already. And the ’Omeless Men won’t do nothink for ye onless
you make it up in menial work.”
“I won’t try either of them,” I said, briefly.
“Don’t blame you, sonny, not a bit. Kind o’ makes a hypercrite of a man,
it does. I ’ate to be a hypercrite, only when I carn’t ’elp it.”
He went on to enumerate other agencies for the raising of the fallen, of
most of which he had tested the hospitality during the past few years.
I rejected them as he named them, one by one. To this rejection Lovey
subscribed with the unreasoning dislike all outcast men feel for the hand
stretched down to them from higher up. Nothing but starvation would have
forced him to any of these thresholds; and for me even starvation would
not work the miracle.
“What’s the matter with the Down and Out?” I sprang on him, suddenly.
He groaned. “Oh, sonny! It’s just—just what I was afeared of.”