"Carl! You know we couldn't; it would have been impossible!"
"Well, we cared more for our reputations than for our—son," he said.
For a moment that poignant word startled Mary into silence; then she said, breathlessly: "But, Carl, that isn't common sense! What about—the boy himself? Would it have been a good thing for him that people should know?"
"It might have been a good thing for us," he said; "and it couldn't be any worse for him than it is. Everybody thinks he's illegitimate." He paused, and then he said a really profound thing—for a fat, selfish man. "Mary, I believe there isn't any real welfare that's built on a lie. If it was to do over again I'd stand up to my own cussed folly."
"You don't seem to consider me!" she said, bitterly.
But he only said, slowly, "He's the finest little chap you ever saw."
"Pretty?" she said, forgetting her bitterness.
"Oh, he's a boy, a real boy. Freckled. And when he's mad he shows his teeth, just as your father used to; I saw him in a fight. No; of course he's not 'pretty.'"
"I'd like to see him—if I wasn't afraid to," she said. She was thirty-four now, a sad, idle, rich woman, with only three interests in life: eating and shopping and keeping the Secret which made her cringe whenever she thought of it, which, since the night she heard Johnny laugh, was pretty much all the time. It was the shopping interest that by and by united with the interest of the Secret; it occurred to her that she might give "him" something. She would buy him a pair of skates! "But you must send them to him, Carl."
"Why don't you do it yourself?"