"Yes, he had been——"
"How?"
"When he woke up he said he had been kicked by a horse."
"May I see him?"
"He isn't here. He insisted on going to the mills to work this morning. We thought, at first, that he had been injured internally, but I guess he didn't get a very bad kick, or he surely would not be going to work to-day."
"Thank you very much. His mother was anxious about him. I will go and tell her that he is all right now," announced Steve, hurrying from the company's hospital.
Rush trotted along and soon reached the Brodsky home, where he conveyed the news to Mrs. Brodsky. At first she thought the boy was deceiving her and that Ignatz had been really seriously hurt even if he were not already dead. The woman set up a wail of grief. Steve did not know what else to do, so he grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her.
The shaking evidently had the desired effect, for Mrs. Brodsky ceased her wailings and began to berate and threaten Ignatz, making promises of what she would do to him when he got home that night.
Steve argued with her, trying to explain that Ignatz surely could not be to blame. He had been kicked by a horse while on his way home to help his mother. After a time the Iron Boy left the widow in a much pleasanter frame of mind. She even smiled at him as he shook hands with her and told her what a good boy Ignatz was and how good he had been to the Iron Boys.
Steve went away smiling, but he became thoughtful as he walked briskly on. He could not understand how it was that Ignatz had been picked up at the place where the doctor said he had found the boy. Surely he was not on his way home, or he could not have been at that point. Steve was a shrewd boy and he began to reason the thing out. He found himself unable to get beyond the finding of the Polish boy, so he gave up wondering, though he suspected there was something more to the affair than he knew about.