"How often has it happened?"
"I don't know ... about five or six times, I think ... perhaps more. There's a place not far from here where he can get it ... an old hut-cook my husband dismissed once, in a fit of temper—he has oh such a temper! Eddy saddles his pony and rides out there, if he's not watched; and then ... then, they bring him back ... like this."
"But who supplies him with money?"
"Money? Oh, but doctor, he can't be kept without pocket-money! He has always had as much as he wanted.—No, it is all my husband's doing,"—and now she broke out in one of those shameless confessions, from which the medical adviser is never safe. "He hates me; he is only happy if he can hurt me and humiliate me. I don't care what becomes of him. The sooner he dies the better!"
"Compose yourself, my dear lady. Later you may regret such hasty words.—And what has this to do with the child? Come, speak out. It will be a relief to you to tell me."
"You are so kind, doctor," she sobbed, and drank, with hysterical gurglings, the glass of water Mahony poured out for her. "Yes, I will tell you everything. It began years ago—when Eddy was only a tot in jumpers. It used to amuse my husband to see him toss off a glass of wine like a grown-up person; and it WAS comical, when he sipped it, and smacked his lips. But then he grew to like it, and to ask for it, and be cross when he was refused. And then... then he learnt how to get it for himself. And when his father saw I was upset about it, he egged him on—gave it to him on the sly.—Oh, he is a bad man, doctor, a BAD, cruel man! He says such wicked things, too. He doesn't believe in God, or that it is wrong to take one's own life, and he says he never wanted children. He jeers at me because I am fond of Eddy, and because I go to church when I can, and says ... oh, I know I am not clever, but I am not quite such a fool as he makes me out to be. He speaks to me as if I were the dirt under his feet. He can't bear the sight of me. I have heard him curse the day he first saw me. And so he's only too glad to be able to come between my boy and me ... in any way he can."
Mahony led the weeping woman back to the dining-room. There he sat long, patiently listening and advising; sat, till Mrs. Glendinning had dried her eyes and was her charming self once more.
The gist of what he said was, the boy must be removed from home at once, and placed in strict, yet kind hands.
Here, however, he ran up against a weak maternal obstinacy. "Oh, but I couldn't part from Eddy. He is all I have.... And so devoted to his mammy."
As Mahony insisted, she looked the picture of helplessness. "But I should have no idea how to set about it. And my husband would put every possible obstacle in the way."