“We’ll send and pay the bill, and get your trunk.”
The generosity almost took my breath away.
“Oh, but—”
“We should be only advancing the money,” he explained; “and we should
look to you to pay us back when you can. It’s quite a usual procedure
with us, because it happens in perhaps six of our cases out of ten. I
don’t have to point out to you,” he continued, with a smile, “what I’m
always obliged to underscore with chaps like those in there, that if
you don’t make good what we spend on your account the loss comes not on
well-disposed charitable people who give of their abundance, but on poor
men who steal from their own penury. The very breakfast you ate this
morning was paid for in the main by fellows who are earning from twelve
to twenty-five dollars a week, and have families to support besides.”