“I slumped the other night—clean went all to pieces. I’m fourteen, you know, but if I’d been four I couldn’t have acted more kiddish. Mother was out and I’d been thinking how I wanted to go to college and couldn’t, because mother can’t afford it, and how I wanted to travel around and couldn’t, and how I even wanted to walk and couldn’t—not for a long time yet—and I just lay here and thought there wasn’t much sense in getting any better anyway—I’d just have to go back and be nothing better than an office boy where I was before I got hurt and—”
“And you succeeded in working yourself up into a fine frenzy of discontent, didn’t you, Jack? I understand, my boy. We all have our rebellious moments.”
“I was crying like a baby when Miss Julie came in.”
“Poor old Jack,” patting his hand sympathetically.
“Poor nothing!” exclaimed the boy in a tone of infinite disgust, “it makes me hot all over to think about it and that wasn’t the worst! I kept on crying.” Jack’s honest nature was abasing itself before his friend. “I kept on crying till she shamed me out of it.”
Landor did not speak, feeling silence at that moment would better harmonize with the boy’s mood. Jack and he understood each other, and the boy feeling his sympathetic interest drew a long breath and went on again.
“She made me tell her all about it and I felt so cut up and blue that I said a lot of things I didn’t mean and I told her it was easy enough for her to be brave—she didn’t know what it was to lie still and perhaps be crippled all your life—the doctor can’t tell. Think of my telling her that!” The boy shuddered. “I believe if I’d struck her, Mr. Landor, I couldn’t have hurt her more, for there’s her father, you see, a million times worse off than I am, and I’d forgotten all about him.”
Landor pushed back his chair and as if he found action of some kind necessary paced the room quietly while the boy talked on.
“Her face got so white and her eyes got so dark that it frightened me, but do you know what she did? I was lying on the couch and she came over and knelt down beside me and talked to me a long time about her father.” Jack’s voice was awed and Landor’s hands went deeper down into his pockets—a way he had when he was moved.
“She called him ‘Daddy’ and you could see just the way she said it that she worshiped him, and she told me that when you loved a person very much it was harder to see him stricken down than if you were ill and helpless yourself. I hadn’t thought of that, but it must be so, mustn’t it, Mr. Landor?”