“Ye-yes, sir,” answered Joshua. He did not know what incorrigible meant, but he knew the blackness that came with being all but drowned in a bathtub filled with water.
“Tk-tk-tk!” clucked the judge. “And you can do nothing with him at all, Mr. Cole?”
“I’m away from home most of the time, as I told you,” said John Cole. “And his mother is not well, and can’t handle him at all. Why, didn’t he threaten to strike his teacher with a heavy iron poker? And he was so—er—desperately in earnest that Mr. Madmallet, a grown man and used to handling boys, was actually afraid to punish this boy’s brother.”
“Tk-tk-tk! Well, they’ll take a good deal of that out of him at the House of Refuge, Mr. Cole. My boy”—to Joshua—“have you any reason to state why you should not be committed to an institution for the disciplining of incorrigible boys like you?”
But before Joshua could reply he heard a low voice beside him saying:
“Tell ’im yes, kid! Tell ’im you’ll be good and that you don’t wanta go.”
Joshua’s frightened eyes fell on the big plainclothes detective who had found him at the gypo camp of Bloodmop Mundy.
“Oh, here you are, Dickinson,” said the judge. “And they tell me you found this razor on young Joshua Cole here. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir, he had it in his inside coat pocket,” replied the detective. “But I think he just took it in fun. He told me all about it—somethin’ about makin’ one o’ these slugs walk on it or somethin’ like that. Just kid play, I’m thinkin’. If you’ll permit a suggestion, Your Honor, I’d advise lookin’ into this matter pretty careful before committin’ this boy to the House of Refuge.”
“I have the sworn testimony of the boy’s father that he cannot be disciplined,” said the judge. “Mr. Cole is away a great part of the time, traveling as a salesman for a wholesale hardware firm. The mother is not well, and finds it impossible to make the boy behave. He is a thief, behind in his studies—though apparently bright enough—and a terror to the neighborhood. Aren’t all these things true, Joshua?”