'You have one, at least, who puts his house here at your service.'
'There's something about it I don't like. Do you suppose I am incapable of taking care of myself?'
'I do indeed,' answered his son with firmness.
'Then you are quite mistaken,' said Andrew, angrily. 'I am quite well enough to go, and have a right to judge for myself. It is very kind of you, but I am in a free country, I believe.'
'No doubt. All honest men are free in this country. But—'
He saw that his father winced, and said no more. Andrew resumed, after a pause in which he had been rousing his feeble drink-exhausted anger,
'I tell you I will not be treated like a child. I demand my clothes and my liberty.'
'Do you know where you were found that night you were brought here?'
'No. But what has that to do with it? I was ill. You know that as well as I.'
'You are ill now because you were lying then on the wet ground under a railway-arch—utterly incapable from the effects of opium, or drink, or both. You would have been taken to the police-station, and would probably have been dead long before now, if you had not been brought here.'