"You know that heady young chap out there will go to the bad if somebody don't pull him up. You know that it would be mean as dirt to let him go wanderin' off to-night with only fifty cents in his pocket, tryin' to find some place to put his head in out of the storm; and yet you want to git out of doin' anything more for him. You're thinkin' how much more comfortable it will be to sit dozin' in your chair, and not have any stranger botherin' round. But I'll head you off agin in spite of your cussed, mean, stingy, selfish, old, shrivelled-up soul, that would like to take its ease even though the hull world was a-groanin' outside the door. A-a-h!"
Having made it clear to the perverse Jeremiah Growther--against whom he seemed to hold such an inveterate spite--what he must do, he arose and called to Haldane: "What are you doin' out there in the rain?"
"I'll be through in a few minutes."
"I don't want the rest done till mornin'."
"It will pay neither of us for me to come back here to do what's left."
"It may pay you, and as to its payin' me, that's my business."
"Not altogether--I wish to do my work on business principles; I haven't got down to charity yet."
"Well, have your own way, then; I s'pose other folks have a right to have it as well as myself, sometimes. Come in soon as you are through."
By the time Haldaue finished his task the clouds had settled heavily all around the horizon, hastening forward an early and gloomy twilight, and the rain was beginning to fall steadily. His mood comported with the aspect of sky and earth, and weariness, the fast ally of despondency, aided in giving a leaden hue to the future and a leaden weight, to his thoughts. The prospect of trudging a mile or more through the drenching rain to his previous squalid resting-place at No. 13, whose only attraction consisted in the fact that no questions were asked, was so depressing that he decided to ask Mr. Growther for permission to sleep in the corner of his woodshed.
"Come in," shouted Mr. Growther, in response to his knock at the door.
"I'm through," said Haldane laconically.
"Well, I ain't," replied Mr. Growther; "you wouldn't mind taking that cheer till I am, would you?"
Haldane found the cushioned armchair and the genial fire exceedingly to his taste, and he felt that in such comfortable quarters he could endure hearing the old man berate himself or any one else for an hour or more.