“I ain’t fit!” Sam murmured as they walked along silently together. It
was the first hint that Sam had ever given that he was not every whit
as good as Michael; and Michael with rare tact had never by a glance
let Sam know how much he wished to have him cleaner, and more suitably
garbed.
“Oh, we’ll make that all right!” said Michael fervently thankful that
at last the time had come for the presentation of the neat and fitting
garments which he had purchased some weeks before for a present for
Sam, and which had been waiting for a suitable opportunity of
presentation.
The dawn was hovering in the East when Michael led Sam up to his own
room, and throwing wide the door of his own little private bath-room
told Sam to take a hot bath, it would make him feel better.
While Sam was thus engaged Michael made a compact bundle of Sam’s old
garments, and stealing softly to the back hall window, landed them by a
neat throw on the top of the ash barrel in the court below. Sam’s
clothes might see the alley again by way of the ash man, but never on
Sam’s back.
Quite late that very same morning, when Sam, clothed and in a new and
righter mind than ever before in his life, walked down with Michael to
breakfast, and was introduced as “my friend Mr. Casey” to the landlady,
who was hovering about the now deserted breakfast table; he looked
every inch of him a respectable citizen. Not handsome and distinguished
like Michael, of course, but quite unnoticeable, and altogether proper
as a guest at the respectable breakfast table of Mrs. Semple.
Michael explained that they had been detained out late the night before
by an accident, and Mrs. Semple gave special orders for a nice
breakfast to be served to Mr. Endicott and his friend, and said it
wasn’t any trouble at all.
People always thought it was no trouble to do things for Michael.
While they ate, Michael arranged with Sam to take a trip out to see
Buck.
“I was expecting to go this morning,” he said. “I had my plans all
made. They write me that Buck is getting uneasy and they wish I’d come,
but now”—he looked meaningly at Sam—“I think I ought to stay here for a
little. Could you go in my place? There are things here I must attend
to.”
Sam looked, and his face grew dark with sympathy. He understood.
“I’ll keep you informed about Lizzie,” went on Michael with delicate
intuition, “and anyway you couldn’t see her for sometime, I think if
you try you could help Buck as much as I. He needs to understand that
breaking laws is all wrong. That it doesn’t pay in the end, and that
there has got to be a penalty—you know. You can make him see things in
a new way if you try. Are you willing to go, Sam?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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