‘It’s outrageous! The woman ought to be arrested!’ said Marcia, angrily.
Sybert took the lamp from the wall and bent over to look at him.
‘Poor little devil! He looks as if he needed soup,’ he muttered.
The woman broke in shrilly again to say that he was eleven years old and never brought in a single soldo. She slaved night and day to keep him fed, and she had children enough of her own to give to.
‘Whose child is he?’ Sybert demanded.
‘He was my husband’s,’ the woman returned; ‘and that husband is dead and I have a new one. The boy is in the way. I can’t be expected to support him forever. It is time he was earning something for himself.’
Marcia sat down on a low stool and drew the boy to her.
‘What can we do?’ she asked, looking helplessly at Sybert. ‘It won’t do to leave him here. She would simply beat him to death as soon as our backs are turned.’
‘I’m afraid she would,’ he acknowledged. ‘Of course I can threaten her with the police, but I don’t believe it will do much good.’ He was thinking that she might better adopt the boy than the dog, but he did not care to put his thoughts into words.
‘I know!’ she exclaimed as if in answer to his unspoken suggestion; ‘I’ll take him home for an errand-boy. He will be very useful about the place. Tell the woman, please, that I’m going to keep him, and make her understand that she has nothing to do with him any more.’