Bob put
his huge paws on my shoulders, licked my face, and barked such a
joyous bark of challenge to the world in general that even the Wall
Street man was touched.
"I guess you are too good friends to part," he said. And so we
were.
We left Wall Street and its gold behind to go out and starve together.
Literally we did that in the days that followed. I had taken to
peddling books, an illustrated Dickens issued by the Harpers, but
I barely earned enough by it to keep life in us and a transient
roof over our heads. I call it transient because it was rarely the
same two nights together, for causes which I have explained. In
the day Bob made out rather better than I. He could always coax a
supper out of the servant at the basement gate by his curvetings
and tricks, while I pleaded vainly and hungrily with the mistress
at the front door. Dickens was a drug in the market. A curious
fatality had given me a copy of "Hard Times" to canvass with. I
think no amount of good fortune could turn my head while it stands
in my bookcase. One look at it brings back too vividly that day
when Bob and I had gone, desperate and breakfastless, from the last
bed we might know for many days, to try to sell it and so get the
means to keep us for another twenty-four hours.
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