He felt it his duty to be cheerier.
"On the other hand, we may get him off; or if we can't get him off altogether—"
"What good would that do—your getting him off? You'd be throwing him back again on a world that doesn't want him."
"Oh, but surely the world does—"
"Yes; the world does—I'm wrong—it does to the same extent that it wanted his father—to give it every ounce of his strength with a pittance for his pay—to spend and be spent till he's good for nothing more—and then to be thrown aside to starve. It's possible that even now Teddy would be willing to do this if they'd only let him live; but tell him it's not good enough. I've told him, and I don't think he believes me; but you're a man, and perhaps you can make him see it."
"Yes, momma dear, he'll do the best he can—"
"It won't be the best he can if he tries to keep him here. We've passed on, my boy and I. Only our bodies are still on the earth, and that for just a little while. A year from now and we'll both be safe—so safe!—and yet you'd try to keep us in a world where men make a curse of everything."
But Teddy himself was less reconciled than his mother to bidding the world good-by. In proportion as his physical strength returned, the fate that had overtaken him became more and more preposterous. To suppose that he had of his own criminal intention stolen money and killed a man was little short of insane. A man had been killed by a pistol he held in his hand; he had taken money because the need was such that he couldn't help himself; but he, Teddy Follett, was neither a thief nor a murderer in any sense involving the exercise of will. He was sure of that. He declared it to himself again and again and again. It was all that gave him fighting force, compelling him to insist, to assert himself, and to protest in season and out of season against being shut up in a cell.
The cell was seven feet long and four feet wide. Round the foot of the bunk and along the sides there was a space of some twelve inches. At the foot there was the iron-ribbed door with a grating, and along the sides a slimy and viscous stone wall. Besides the bunk, a bucket, and a shelf there was nothing whatever in the way of furnishings. Under the bed he was privileged to keep the suitcase with his wardrobe, and on the shelf whatever his mother and sisters brought him in the way of food. By day, the only light was through the grating to the corridor; by night, a feeble electric bulb was extinguished at half past nine. The Brig being an ancient prison, and Teddy but one of a long, long line of murderers who had lain on this hard bed, vermin infested everything.