“Now, hush up! You shut your noise! Don't you come talkin' about--about nothin' to eat. You come around here talkin' about ham an'--about things to eat, an' botherin' me, an' I won't have it. How can I get my mind quieted down to bread an' water when you're cormn' here all the time? It's just food, food, food, an' tempt, tempt, tempt, all the time. I'm havin' a hard enough time as it is, dod--I mean--” “Why don't you quit it, then? I don't see what you want to be a plaguey old saint for, anyway. I don't see where you 're goin' to make any money at it.” “There now! Money! That just shows you oughtn't to be around here, Lem. You don't understand the first principles of a saint. A saint ain't in the saint business for the money it gets him.” “What is he one for, then, I'd like to know? What's it good for, anyway?” “Why, dod-baste--no, I take that back, Lem. I mean anybody ought to know what a saint is for. He's--well, he's just a saint. There don't have to be no reason for a saint. He just stays around where he is, an' is. Folks come an' look at him an' wonder how he does it. He's a credit to the town, dod--I mean, he's a credit to the town. He gets wrote up in the papers. They make monuments of him when he's dead, an' put his picture in a book.” “Well, I don't think it's sense, I'd rather not be dead an' have monuments, if I had to go an' have nothin' but bread an' water. I'd rather be alive an' have ham an' eggs--” “Now, you stop that! You're talkin' about ham an' eggs just to pester me, an' I won't have it! You get away from here!” Always it ended in Lem coaxing again to be taken out of pawn. He would sit in the shanty snivelling, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand after he had run out of words, but always his father sent him away again, back to Miss Susan. He ordered him out of the shanty sternly enough, but after Lem had closed the door, going out into the night reluctantly, Saint Harvey could not forget him. He worked off his irritation by whanging his pillow around the room, kicking it when it fell to the floor, until he was nearly exhausted, and then he would settle himself in his bed and, grumbling at first, read--his dime novels! The truth was that, much as he scolded about them, he welcomed the nocturnal visits of the boy, even if they did irritate him (or because they did), and during the long, saintly days when he sat in his hickory rocker reading his “Lives of the Saints,” he became hungrily homesick for Lem. He missed him. Now and then, too, Saint Harvey had a qualm. Now and then the thought came to him that he was being a saint because there was no heavy work connected with the job, and he had occasionally a guilty feeling that he had put Lem in pawn to be rid of him. He was not very happy. When he thought such thoughts he had second thoughts--that he was thinking such anti-saint thoughts because he was finding the saint business harder than the junk business.