The water boiled. Mrs. Finnegan was spreading butter on long slices cut from a home-baked loaf. It was Jimmy who took the kettle from the hook and filled the teapot.
“Mrs. Finnegan,” said Dr. Lovaway, “why do you want the boy put into an asylum?”
“Is it me wanting him put away?” she said. “I want no such thing. The notion never entered my head, nor Michael’s either, who’s been like a father to the boy. Only when Constable Malone came to me, and when it was a matter of pleasing him and the sergeant, I didn’t want to be disobliging, for the sergeant is always a good friend of mine, and Constable Malone is a young man I’ve a liking for. But as for wanting to get rid of Jimmy! Why would I? Nobody’d grudge the bit the creature would eat, and there’s many a little turn he’d be doing for me about the house.”
Mr. Finnegan was hovering in the background, half hidden in the smoke which filled the house. He felt that he ought to support his wife.
“What I said to the sergeant,” he said, “no longer ago than last Friday when I happened to be in town about a case I had on in the Petty Sessions’ Court—what I said to the sergeant was this: ‘So long as the boy isn’t kept there too long, and so long as he’s willing to go——‘”
Jimmy, seated again on his low stool before the fire, looked up.
“Amn’t I ready to go wherever I’m wanted?” he said.
“There you are now, doctor,” said the sergeant. “You’ll not refuse the poor boy when he wants to go?”
“Sergeant,” said Dr. Lovaway, “I can’t, I really can’t certify that boy is a lunatic. I don’t understand why you ask me to. It seems to me——”
Poor Lovaway was much agitated. It seemed to him that he had been drawn into an infamous conspiracy against the liberty of a particularly helpless human being.