His soft hat was slouched over one eye, and his
turned-up faded coat-collar but half-concealed the fragments of a
soiled shirt front that lay open on his breast inside. When I
confronted him, he advanced a step and said, with his eyes directed
towards his boots,
"Will you give me a little help, miss, for God's sake. I am starving
and can get no work."
Cousin Bessie from her place by the window could hear his words, and
coming to the door, she looked at him from head to foot. He was young
and stalwart, though so destitute.
"I will give you some work and pay you well for it" she said. "Come,
you are a strapping young fellow and won't find it hard to do."
He was silent for a moment and still kept looking at his dilapidated
boots.
"I will give you the price of an honest, independent supper" she
continued, "that is better than begging it. You will relish it, I
know."
"It's done ma'am" said he, kicking his dusty toes against the step
where he stood. "Show me the work."
Cousin Bessie looked significantly at me and led him out to where his
occupation lay. As she turned to leave him, with a strict injunction
to do it well, he raised his hat from his head and turned reverently
towards her.
"I'll do it as well as mortal hands can do it ma'am" he said with a
tremor in his hoarse husky voice. "You're the first woman as has
spoken a kind word to me since--since--I buried the one that 'ud have
made my life different if she'd lived.
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