“Father McGrailey looked madder. ‘I’ve heard you, sir, a hundred times, say you didn’t believe in no herding of people or animals together—that you wouldn’t even bring up a pup in kennels, if you could find a home for him.’
“‘That’s so,’ said my boss coolly, ‘but I make one exception. Persons whose minds are affected cut the very bottom out of society. They’re our criminals. I’d doctor them. What are you doing for your boy; come now.’
“The man and the woman looked at each other with quite cunning faces. The boss had finished strong, I was lying beside his chair, and thinks I to myself, ‘What’ll they do now?’ I knew they’d win out, for I tell you, Boy, a pair of parents at bay is a worse team than a pair of tigers.”
“Stop, Gringo, a minute,” I said. “Let me get my wits to work. Two good citizens with a dangerous fool of a boy have got the richest man in the community cornered at midnight. He’s got a good heart. They’ll overcome him, but how?—I give it up.”
“So did I,” said Gringo triumphantly, “but they didn’t. ‘Sir,’ said McGrailey in a voice that made my skin creep—it had the Scotch burr, and an awful agony twisted up with it—‘may you never know the heart-scald that we’ve known. I tell you, sir, I’ve visited the police courts in New York—I’ve seen young men and women that were nothing but grown-up babies judged as if they were you or me—God pity the weak in brain—and I vowed a vow that I’d kill my son before I’d trust him to the stone heart of the unfeeling public!’
“This was pretty stiff, and mister began to waver.
“The woman came back with her old cry—‘S’pose it was your boy—s’pose it was your boy.’
“My boss’s face softened. I knew his thoughts ran back to the room where young John lay in his baby sleep, so soft, so happy, so coddled. Could anything tear that boy from his arms?—not the whole world.
“‘My friends,’ he said softly, ‘I’m pleading for your boy. You don’t understand. You’re doing him an injustice to keep him here. There are institutions, I tell you, where he will be treated kindly.’