“No.”

“How long have you worked for me?”

“Five months.”

“And you are the cleverest worker I have.  You admit that?”

“I don’t know.”

Again he laughed.  “Once,” he said, “I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.  But I’ve seen a prettier.”

“I believe you.”

“’But you’ve got a certain spirit.  You don’t cringe.”

“Don’t I?”

“No!” he bellowed, “you don’t.”  And when he saw that she didn’t cringe, he laughed once more.

“You live with Minnie Bauer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have no father—­no mother?”

“No, sir.”

“Burnt alive in a tenement fire, weren’t they?”

She answered with a great effort, and seemed upon the verge of tears, “Yes, sir.”

“You will leave Minnie, and come here to live.”

“Why?”

“Because I make it my business to reward the skilful, the laborious, and the deserving.”

She shook her head.  “That’s not good enough,” she said.

“You will keep my house in order,” he said; “you will learn to help me with the piano.  You will have fine clothes to wear, and the spending of plenty of money.”

“Not good enough,” she repeated.

“I have read you these five months as if you were a book.  You are loyal to your friends.  You can keep secrets.  I admire you.  There are many things that I wish to talk about.  But I cannot talk about them except to some one that I can trust.  Will you stay?”

She shook her head, but the legless man smiled, as he might have smiled if she had nodded it.

“I am suffering,” he said, “the tortures of the damned.  I ask you for help and for comfort, and you refuse them.”

A look curiously like tenderness swam into the girl’s eyes.  The beggar moved sideways upon his crutches.

“If you want to go,” he said, “the way’s open.”

“Can I really go if I want to, and not come back?”

“You really can,” he said.  “Most things that I want I take, but a man can’t take help and comfort unless they are freely given.”

She moved slowly forward as if to discover the truth of his statement that the way was open.  He made not the least gesture of interference.  When she was between him and the outer door and rather nearer the latter, she turned about sharply.

“What’s troubling you?” she asked.

“The fact,” he said, and there was a something really charming in the expression of his mouth and eyes, “that though I can give orders to very many people, and be obeyed as a general is obeyed by his soldiers in war times, I have no friend.  Fear attracts this person to me, self-interest attracts that person, but there’s no one that’s held to me by friendship.”

“You’re only asking me to be your friend?”

“You will be as safe in my house as in the rooms of the Gerry Society.”