"You did wrong! Always do your duty. It was your duty to send me to the chair, if you could. A fine father I'd been to you--and to Harry--and a good honest man I was to your mother! My boy, I'm face to face with the penalty that I have to pay--you. I know all about you, Bubbles, from Lichtenstein, from Dr. Ferris, from Wilmot Allen and--and others. And you're a good boy. I drove your mother crazy, I let you drift into the streets--to sink, I thought, and perish; but you're a good boy. I gave you no education, but you have picked up reading and writing and God knows what else. Once I was going to wring your neck. I didn't. That's the only favor you ever had at my hands. You'll grow up to be a good man--a fine, clever, understanding man. And it won't be because of me, it will be in spite of me. This is the hardest thing I have to face. You've come now to pay a duty call. Well, my boy, I'm obliged. But I wish to Heaven I had some hold on your affection, some way of getting a hold. Bubbles, what can I do to make you like me?"
Bubbles wriggled with awful discomfort, but said nothing.
"Is it because of your mother that you can't ever like me?"
Bubbles drew a long breath as if for a deep dive. His voice shook. "She lives in a bug-house," he said; "you drove her into it. Dr. Ferris says you were crazy yourself and nothing you ever done ought to be held against you. He says, and Miss Barbara, she says, that I ought to try to like you and feel kind to you. And--and I thought it was my duty to come and tell you that I just can't."
He was only a little boy, and the delivery of these plain truths to a man he had always held in deadly dread unmanned him. He gave one short, wailing, whimpering sob, and then bit his lips until he had himself in a sort of control.
"That's all right, Bubbles," said the legless man after a pause. "It hits hard, but it's all right. And whether you said it or not, it was coming to me, and I knew it. Do you mind if I send you books and things now and then? There was a book I had when I was a boy. I'd like you to have it. Don't know what reminds me of it--unless it's you. It's the story of a Frenchman, Bayard--they called him the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. That's French. The book tells what it means. You better go now. I'm talking against time. I haven't got the same control of my nerves I used to have. I'm all broken up, my boy. But you're dead right--dead right. I say so, and I think so. You're to go to boarding-school. That's good. They won't teach you any evil."
He did not offer his hand, and the boy was glad.
"Well, good-by," he said uneasily, reached the door, turned, and came back a little way. "Wish you good luck," he said.
Blizzard lowered his formidable head almost reverently. "Thank you," he said.
Poor Bubbles, he began to whistle before he was out of the building; it wasn't from heartlessness, it was from pure discomfort and remorse. Anyway, his father heard the shrill piping--and he sat and looked straight ahead of him, and his face was as that of Satan fallen--fallen, and hell fires licked into the marrow of his bones.