"Of course he will prosecute the little lad, if the evidence should warrant it, but he thinks it the unlikeliest thing in the world that the boy is guilty at all, and until there is more developed against the child he hates to lock him up for months and months! It would do no good for Gorham to refuse to prosecute him, for the other prosecutors would hold on to him. So the little boy has gone to jail. Gorham is terribly wrought up about it."
"But can't you arrange it somehow, James?" his mother asked. "I should so like for you to be able to do something for Mr. Gorham." She sighed as she spoke.
No adequate requital of their obligations had been possible, of course. They had not been able to further Gorham's plans in any respect. He was a rich man, and reputed even richer than he was. He had no speculative tendency outside of the theatrical business. As for social prestige, he was not of their sort, and their circle not his. In truth, he had not cared often to meet these tearful, exacting women, who regarded him as a hero, and whose ideals so far exceeded his imagination and his ambition.
"Gorham asked me to go on the bail-bond," continued the broker, "although he said I should lose nothing if the boy absconds; but I wouldn't agree to that, and I asked Frank, for him,—but Frank wouldn't."
"Oh, Frank!" The poignant duet rose like a wail, and the athlete cowered behind his nephew's pink ribbon shoulder-knots and white frock as the child bounced and gurgled and squealed beguilingly at him.
"Do you think you are right to set them on me?" said the strong man weakly.
"Quit carousing with the baby and talk sense!" his brother adjured him.
"Oh, Frank! remember!" cried his mother in tears.
"Oh, Frank, money was nothing then! No friends, no help, every creature but Mr. Gorham fleeing from the plague-stricken!" cried Frank's sister-in-law.
"And how thoughtful for us—for me!—to remember and bring me my son's last words, his last messages!" The tears choked his mother's utterance.