This marvelous charity,
the cleansing hope for his blackened soul, swept over him in a warm
rush of humble praise and unutterable gratitude. Nothing of the Lord's
was lost: "His eye is on the sparrow."
"Certainly, lay off your coat," Bella was urging; "it's fierce hot. Lem
can rush a can of beer from the hotel. Even he wouldn't go to turn out
one of the crowd in a hard fix. I'm awful glad you saw him."
With June Bowman in his house, engaged in verbal agreements with Bella
and spreading comfortably on a chair, Lemuel was powerless. AH his
instinct pressed him to send the other on, to refuse--in the commonest
self-preservation--shelter. But both the laws of his old life and the
commands of the new were against this act of simple precaution. Bowman
eyed him with a shrewd appraisement.
"A clever fellow," he said, nodding; "admire you for coming out here
for a while. Well, how about the suds?"
He produced a thick roll of yellow-backed currency and detached a small
bill. "I'll finance this campaign."
Lemuel Doret was confused by the rapidity with which the discredited
past was re-created by Bowman's mere presence. He was at the point of
refusing to fetch the beer when he saw that there was no explanation
possible; they would regard him as merely crabbed, and Bella would
indulge her habit of shrill abuse. It wasn't the drink itself that
disturbed him but the old position of "rushing the can"--a symbol of so
much that he had left forever.
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