to sleep. Of his story I did not believe a single word, though I did believe that he had no bed. "Can I bunk with you to-night?" he came finally to the point. I told him he most certainly could not. He refused to believe me. I assured him I meant it. I was his last hope, he said, with a nervous grin. I told him to try a doss-house. He grinned and giggled and flushed--then thanked me! It would only be for a night or two, he urged. "You can't possibly let me walk the streets all night!" I replied that one Boyde had been enough for me. I had learnt my lesson, he could walk the streets for the rest of his life for all I cared. He giggled, still refusing to believe I meant it. His father was sending money. He would repay me. He went on pleading. I again repeated that I could not take him in. He left, still thanking me and blushing.
Visions of another Boyde were in my mind. At the time, moreover, our poverty was worse than it ever had been. Boyde, I found, had sold six of my French stories to McCloy at $5 each, and had pocketed the money. My salary was now being docked five dollars each week till this $30 was paid off. We had, therefore, only ten dollars a week between the two of us. Everything was in pawn again, and times were extra hard. To have Calder living on us was out of the question, for once he got in we should never get him out. I was tired of criminal parasites.
It was my head that argued thus; in my heart I knew perfectly well that Calder was guileless, innocent as milk, an honest, feckless, stupid fellow who was in genuine difficulty for the moment, but who would never sponge on us, and certainly do nothing mean. Conscience pricked me--for half an hour perhaps; in the stress and excitement of the day I then forgot him. That evening Acton Davis, the dramatic critic, gave me a theatre seat, on condition that I wrote the notice for him. It was after eleven when I reached home. Curled up in my bed, sound asleep, his clothes neatly folded on the chair, lay Calder.
It was February and freezing cold. Kay was away for
