“Very well, Carter, I won't. It is absolutely impossible. I told you to look out for Gay--to make strong love to her--not to go blundering like a bull in a china shop.” Henrietta had this every day. Freeman was even worse. He accused her of having told Bruce some lie, of course, but the worst was his insistent demand for money. He must have money. There must be some way in which she could get it, he said. “There's not,” she told him. “How can I get it?” Freeman did not know, but he knew he had to have money. He was as ugly about it as possible, worse than he had ever been. “You get me some money,” he said brutally. “That's all I want from you--some money.” “Freeman, I can't get any. If I could get it I would not give it to you. Presently we will have to leave this house, and wherever we go next we have to pay in advance. And I must give something to Johnnie Alberson. I'm afraid of him. I _must_ pay him something. I don't like the way he acts.” “Let him act,” said Freeman scornfully. All in all Henrietta was in no state of mind to think of any troubles except her own, and poor Lem was left to his own resources. Or to his one resource. That one resource was his father, and his father, unfortunately, was having his own troubles. He was having difficulty in preserving that calmness of mind and subjugation of appetite necessary to carry on the business of a successful saint. CHAPTER XVII Again and again Lem stole from his room at night by the window route and made his way to his father's hermitage, to beg to be taken out of pawn. These visits caused Saint Harvey of Riverbank the utmost irritation. The good Saint Harvey, Little Brother to Stray Dogs, was doing his best to live up to the task he had set himself. He was trying faithfully to mortify the flesh and to live abstemiously (on bread and water), to do without his pipe, to think high thoughts, and to be gentle and kind to all living creatures, particularly to stray dogs. He had a double reason for trying. The news that he was in business as a saint had gone around town--for he could not keep from bragging about it--and old friends and perfect strangers dropped into the junkyard to inquire how he was progressing and to learn from his own lips how a man went about being a saint and how he liked the job. The worst, of course, was living on bread and water alone. Every atom of his huge body seemed to cry for ham and eggs every minute, and his stomach simply yelled for ham and eggs. And that made him irritable, of course, and made it more difficult to keep from dod-basting everybody, and everything. And it made him long for his pipe, which would have been the solace that every man knows tobacco is. And then the questioners would come: “An' say, Harvey, they say you don't eat nothin' but bread an' water. Is that so?”