I grew so angry at him I could hardly bridle my anger in.

“—­like oyster sandwiches?” he asked.

* * * * *

He didn’t even wait to let me choose my own food.

“Two oyster sandwiches and—­a cup of coffee,” he barked.

While I ate he stepped outside and talked with another friend.

* * * * *

“Good-bye,” he was bidding me, extending a tiny hand, the back of it covered with steel-coloured hairs, “you’d better go back up to Jersey—­just heard your daddy is very sick there ... he might need your help.”

I thought cautiously.  Evidently he knew nothing of my father’s having been sent home by his lodge.  I affected to be perturbed....

“In that case—­could you—­advance me my fare to Haberford?”

I’d wangle a few dollars out of him.

My grandfather’s answer was a silent, granite smile.

“—­just want to see what you can cajole out of the old man, eh?  No, Johnnie—­I’ll leave you to make your way back in the same way you’ve made your way to Washington ... from all accounts railroad fare is the least of your troubles.”

My whole hatred of him, so carefully concealed while I thought there was some hopes of putting through my educational scheme, now broke out—­

“You"—­I began, cursing....

“I knew that’s the way you felt all along ... better run along now, or I’ll say I don’t know you, and have you taken up for soliciting alms.”

* * * * *

Before nightfall I was well on my way to Philadelphia.  For a while I resigned myself to the life of a tramp.  I hooked up with another gang of hoboes, in the outskirts of that city, and taught them the plan of the ex-cook that we’d crowned king down in Texas....

I kept myself in reading matter by filching the complete works of Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton—­from an outside stand of a second hand book store....

* * * * *

—­left that gang, and started forth alone again.  I became a walking bum, if a few miles a day constitutes taking that appellation.  I walked ahead a few miles, then sat down and studied my Milton, or dug deep into Tristram Shandy.  Hungry, I went up to farmhouse or backdoor of city dwelling, and asked for food....

* * * * *

I found myself in the outskirts of Newark again.

I took my Sterne and Milton to Breasted’s, hoping to trade them for other books.  I stood before the outside books, on the stand, hesitating.  I was, for the moment, ashamed to show myself to “the perfesser,” because of the raggedness that I had fallen into.

While I was hesitating, a voice at my elbow—­

“Any books I can show you?—­any special book you’re looking for?”

The voice was the voice of the tradesman, warning off the man unlikely to buy—­but it was the familiar voice of my friend, “the perfesser,” just the same.  I turned and smiled into his face, happy in greeting him, losing the trepidation my rags gave me.