Tom was not sure that he did.
"A socialist is one o' them fellers who whatever he sees knows it belongs to him if he can get ahold of it. It's gettin' ahold of it what counts. Now if you was to have somethink I wanted locked up in yer 'ouse, let us say, and I was to make my way in so as I could take it—why, then it'd be mine. That's the law o' Gord, I believes; and I tries to live up to it."
Enjoying a frankness which widened his horizon, Tom was nevertheless perplexed by it. "But wouldn't that be something like burglary?"
"Burglary is what them may call it what ain't socialists; but it don't do to hang a dog because yer've give him a bad name. A lot o' good people's been condemned that way. When I'm in court I always appeals to justice."
"And do you get it?"
"I get men's. I don't get Gord's. You see that apple?" They stopped before a window in Horatio Street where apples were displayed. "Now, do yer suppose that apple growed itself for any one man in partic'lar? No! That apple didn't know nothink about men's laws when it blossomed on a apple tree. It just give itself generallike to the human race. If you was to go in and collar that big red one, and git away with it, it'd be yours. Stands to reason it'd be. Gord's law! But if that there policeman, a-squintin' his ugly eye at us this minute—he knows Honey Lem, he does!—was to pull yer in, yer might git thirty days. Man's law! And I'll leave it to you which is best worth sufferin' for."
In this philosophy of life there was something Tom found reasonable, and something in which he felt a flaw without being able to detect it. He chased it round and round in his thoughts as he sat through the long dull hours with his father. It passed the time; it helped him to the habit of thinking things out for himself. His mind being clear, and his intuitions acute, he could generally solve a problem not beyond his years. When, on the morrow, they walked in the cool of the day down the length of Hudson Street till it ends in Reade Street, Tom brought the subject up from another point of view.
"But, Mr. Honeybun, suppose someone took something from you? What then?"
"He'd git it in the nut," the socialist answered, tersely. "Not if there'd be two of 'em," he added, in amendment. "If there's two I don't contend. I ain't a communist."