answered pleasantly, for the tailor-man amused him, and the
whimsical mental attitude of his past life was being brought to the
surface by this odd figure, with big spectacles pushed up on a yellow
forehead, and shrunken hands viciously clutching the shears.

"You don't mean to say you're not going to work to-day, and this suit of
clothes promised for to-morrow night--for the Manor House too!"

With a piece of chalk Charley idly made heads on brown paper. "After
all, why should clothes be the first thing in one's mind--when they are
some one else's! It's a beautiful day outside. I've never felt the sun
so warm and the air so crisp and sweet--never in all my life."

"Then where have you lived?" snapped out the tailor with a sneer. "You
must be a Yankee--they have only what we leave over down there!"--he
jerked his head southward. "We don't stop to look at weather here. I
suppose you did where you come from?"

Charley smiled in a distant sort of way. "Where I came from, when we
weren't paid for our work we always stopped to consider our health--and
the weather. I don't want a great deal. I put it to you honestly. Do you
want me? If you do, will you give me enough to live on--enough to buy
a suit of clothes a year, to pay for food and a room? If I work for you
for nothing, I have to live on others for nothing, or kill myself as
you're doing."

There was no answer at once, and Charley went on: "I came to you because
I saw you wanted help badly. I saw that you were hard-pushed and sick--"

"I wasn't sick," interrupted the tailor with a snarl.

"Well, overworked, which is the same thing in the end. I did the best I
could: I gave you my hands--awkward enough they were at first, I know,
but--"

"It's a lie. They weren't awkward," churlishly cut in the tailor.

"Well, perhaps they weren't so awkward, but they didn't know quite what
to do--"

"You knew as well as if you'd been taught," came back in a growl.

"Well, then, I wasn't awkward, and I had a knack for the work. What was
more, I wanted work. I wanted to work at the first thing that appealed
to me. I had no particular fancy for tailoring--you get bowlegged in
time!"--the old spirit was fighting with the new--"but here you were at
work, and there I was idle, and I had been ill, and some one who wasn't
responsible for me--a stranger-worked for me and cared for me. Wasn't
it natural, when you were playing the devil with yourself, that I should
step in and give yo