“And if he’s a decent chap,” continued Johnny serenely, “it will be all right, there won’t be any difficulty. If he ain’t, then we can do something else.”
His mother was reluctant to concur but the boy had his way. He sat with his elbows on the table, his head pressed in his hands, but he could not think out the things he wanted to say to this man. He would look up and stare around the room as if he were in a strange place, though it was not strange to him at all for he had lived in it many years. There was not much furniture in the apartment, yet there was but little space in it. The big table was covered with American cloth, mottled and shiny. Two or three chairs full of age and discomfort stood upon a carpet that was full of holes and stains. There were some shelves in a recess, an engraving framed in maple of the player scene from “Hamlet,” and near by on the wall hung a gridiron whose prongs were woven round with coloured wools and decorated with satin bows. Mrs. Flynn had a passion for vases, and two of these florid objects bought at a fair companioned a clock whose once snowy face had long since turned sallow because of the oil Mrs. Flynn had administered “to make it go properly.”
But he could by no means think out this letter; his mother sat so patiently watching him that he asked her to go and sit in the other room. Then he sat on, sniffing, as if thinking with his nose, while the room began to smell of the smoking lamp. He was remembering how years ago, when they were little children, he had seen Pomony in her nightgown and, angered with her for some petty reason, he had punched her on the side. Pomony had turned white, she could not speak, she could not breathe. He had been momentarily proud of that blow, it was a good blow, he had never hit another boy like that. But Pomony had fallen into a chair, her face tortured with pain, her eyes filled with tears that somehow would not fall. Then a fear seized him, horrible, piercing, frantic: she was dying, she would die, and there was nothing he could do to stop her! In passionate remorse and pity he had flung himself before her, kissing her feet—they were small and beautiful though not very clean,—until at last he had felt Pomony’s arms droop caressingly around him and heard Pomony’s voice speaking lovingly and forgivingly to him.
After a decent interval his mother returned to him.
“What are we going to do about her?” she asked, “she’ll have to go away.”
“Away! Do you mean go to a home? No, but why go away? I’m not ashamed; what is there to be ashamed of?”
“Who the deuce is going to look after her? You talk like a tom-fool—yes, you are,” insisted Mrs. Flynn passionately. “I’m out all day from one week’s end to the other. She can’t be left alone, and the people downstairs are none too civil about it as it is. She’ll have to go to the workhouse, that’s all.”
Johnny was aghast, indignant, and really angry. He would never never consent to such a thing! Pomony! Into a workhouse! She should not, she should stop at home, here, like always, and have a nurse.
“Fool!” muttered his mother, with castigating scorn. “Where’s the money for nurses and doctors to come from? I’ve got no money for such things!”
“I’ll get some!” declared Johnny hotly.