"Look you here, young master," he continued; "you have no right to be
in company with that boy. He'll bring you to grief as sure as I tell
you."

"I shall be able to bear it," answered Clare with a sigh.

"He'll be the loss of your character to you."

"I 'ain't got a character to lose," replied Clare. "I thought I had;
but when nobody will believe me, where's my character then?"

"Now you're wrong there," returned the man. "I'm not much, I know; but
I believe every word you say, and should be very sorry to find myself
mistaken."

"Thank you, sir," said Clare. "May I carry your bag for you?"

If Clare had seen what then passed in Tommy's mind, at the back of
those glistening ferret-eyes of his, he would have been almost
reconciled to taking the man's advice, and getting rid of him. Tommy
was saying to himself that his pal wasn't such a duffer after all--he
was on the lay for the man's tools!

Tommy never reasoned except in the direction of cunning self-help--of
fitting means and intermediate ends to the one main object of
eating. It is wonderful what a sharpener of the poor wits hunger is!

"I guess I'm the abler-bodied pauper!" answered the man; and picking
up the bag he had dropped at his feet while they conversed, he walked