Dr. Lovaway saw, or believed he saw, exactly how things were. The boy was evidently of weak mind. There was little sign of actual lunacy, no sign at all of violence about him. Mrs. Finnegan added a voluble description of the case.
“It might be a whole day,” she said, “and he wouldn’t be speaking a word, nor he wouldn’t seem to hear if you speak to him, and he’d just sit there by the fire the way you see him without he’d be doing little turns about the place, feeding the pig, or mending a gap in the wall or the like. I will say for Jimmy, the poor boy’s always willing to do the best he can.”
“Don’t be troubling the doctor now, Mrs. Finnegan,” said the sergeant. “He knows the way it is with the boy without your telling him. Just let the doctor sign what has to be signed and get done with it. Aren’t we wet enough as it is without standing here talking half the day?”
The mention of the wet condition of the party roused Mrs. Finnegan to action. She hung a kettle from a blackened hook in the chimney and piled up turf on the fire. Jimmy was evidently quite intelligent enough to know how to boil water. He took the bellows, went down on his knees, and blew the fire diligently. Mrs. Finnegan spread a somewhat dirty tablecloth on a still dirtier table and laid out cups and saucers on it.
Dr. Lovaway was puzzled. The boy at the fire might be, probably was, mentally deficient. He was not a case for an asylum. He was certainly not likely to become violent or to do any harm either to himself or anyone else. It was not clear why Mrs. Finnegan, who seemed a kindly woman, should wish to have him shut up. It was very difficult to imagine any reason for the action of the police in the matter. Constable Malone had discovered the existence of the boy in this remote place. Sergeant Rahilly had taken a great deal of trouble in preparing papers for his committal to the asylum, and had driven out to Ballygran on a most inclement day. Dr. Lovaway wished he understood what was happening.
Finnegan, having left Patsy Doolan’s mare, and apparently Patsy Doolan himself in the shed, came into the house.
Dr. Lovaway appealed to him.
“It doesn’t seem to me,” he said, “that this boy ought to be sent to an asylum. I shall be glad to hear anything you have to tell me about him.”
“Well now,” said Mr. Finnegan, “he’s a good, quiet kind of a boy, and if he hasn’t too much sense there’s many another has less.”
“That’s what I think,” said Dr. Lovaway.