Susan ascended, found the big policeman in his shirt sleeves, trying to soothe the most hideous monstrosity she had ever seen—a misshapen, hairy animal looking like a monkey, like a rat, like half a dozen repulsive animals, and not at all like a human being. The thing was clawing and growling and grinding its teeth. At sight of Susan it fixed malevolent eyes on her and began to snap its teeth at her.
"Don't mind him," said O'Ryan. "He's only acting up queer."
Susan sat not daring to look at the thing lest she should show her aversion, and not knowing how to state her business when the thing was so clamorous, so fiendishly uproarious. After a time O'Ryan succeeded in quieting it. He seemed to think some explanation was necessary. He began abruptly, his gaze tenderly on the awful creature, his child, lying quiet now in his arms:
"My wife—she died some time ago—died when the baby here was born."
"You spend a good deal of time with it," said Susan.
"All I can spare from my job. I'm afraid to trust him to anybody, he being kind of different. Then, too, I like to take care of him. You see, it's all I've got to remember her by. I'm kind o' tryin' to do what she'd want did." His lips quivered. He looked at his monstrous child. "Yes, I like settin' here, thinkin'—and takin' care of him."
This brute of a slave driver, this cruel tyrant over the poor and the helpless—yet, thus tender and gentle—thus capable of the enormous sacrifice of a great, pure love!
"You've got a way of lookin' out of the eyes that's like her," he went on—and Susan had the secret of his strange forbearance toward her. "I suppose you've come about being let off on the assessment?"
Already he knew the whole story of Rod and the hospital.
"Yes—that's why I'm bothering you," said she.
"You needn't pay but five-fifty. I can only let you off a dollar and a half—my bit and the captain's. We pass the rest on up—and we don't dare let you off."