"Tuh!"—it was an angry sneer. "And I s'pose he whined 'bout me takin' the kid?—though he could do nothin' for Johnnie. Sophie was dead, and the kid was too little t' be left alone."
"Ye took the lad the day Albert Davis was half crazed over his wife," charged the Father; "—hurried him off without a word or a line! A bad trick altogether! Oh, Davis guessed ye had the boy—the wee Johnnie he loved like a father. But he had small time t' hunt, what with his work. And at last he had t' give up."
All that told Johnnie a great deal. He shot a look at Cis. Barber had taunted him often with his Uncle Albert's indifference—with the fact that not even a post card had ever come from the rich man's garage to the lonely little boy in the area building. But how could Uncle Albert send a post card to some one if he did not know that some one's address?
Barber kicked the morris chair out of his way. "That's the thanks I git for supportin' a youngster who ain't no kin t' me!" he stormed.
Father Pat drew himself up. The red stubble on his bare head seemed stiff with righteous wrath. "Then I'll ask ye why ye kidnapped the lad?" he cried. "No kin t' ye, eh? And ye knew it, didn't ye? Then! So why didn't ye leave the boy with Davis?—Because ye wanted his work!"
"Work!" repeated Barber, and broke into a shrill laugh. "Why, he wasn't worth his feed! I took him jus' t' be decent!"
"Barber," returned the Father, firmly, "the tellin' o' a lie against annybody is always a bad thing. But there's another kind o' lie that's even worse, and that's lying t' yerself—that ye was thinkin' o' his good when ye rushed him away, and not o' yer own pocket!" Then, nodding wisely as he took the chair Big Tom booted aside, "If ye wanted t' be so decent, why didn't ye take the lad when his father and mother died? Ha-a-a! He was too tiny t' be useful then, wasn't he? So ye let Sophie Davis bring him up; ye let his uncle support him."
"Oh, all right," rejoined the longshoreman, resentfully. "I guess when y've made up your mind about a man, there ain't no use talkin' t' y', is there?"
"No use, Mr. Barber," answered the other. "And this very mornin', while I've still got the breath and the strength t' do it, I mean t' tell the lad the truth!"
"I been intendin' t' tell him myself," asserted Barber. "But up t' now, it wasn't no story t' be tellin' a little kid—leastways, not a kid that's got a loony way o' seein' things, and worryin' over 'em. And I warn y'! Y're likely as not t' make him sick!"