Gloria smiled understandingly at the woman who sat across the desk.
"I understand, Mrs. Francis," she said.
"It's not that Tom's a bad boy, you know," the woman said. "But he's—easily led. That's the only thing."
"Of course," Gloria said. She looked at the middle-aged woman, wearing a gray suit that did not fit her overweight frame, and a silly little white hat. "I'm sure everything's going to be all right," she said.
Mrs. Francis gave a little gasp. "Oh, I hope so," she said. "Tom doesn't mean to cause any trouble. He just doesn't understand—"
Gloria went over the report sheets mentally. Tom didn't mean to cause any trouble, but he had been involved in a gang war or two—nothing in the way of Thompson sub-machine guns, of course, or mortars, just a few pistols and zip-guns and rocks and broken bottles.
Tom hadn't been killed yet. That was, Gloria thought sadly, only a matter of time. He hadn't killed anybody yet, either—but he'd come close. Tom had seen the inside of a jail or two a lot more recently than he'd seen the inside of a classroom.
Tom was easily led.
Sure.