“[It’s never too late to mend]”
“Do you think that is true, Mister? Is there any hope for a battered wreck like me?”
“As true dot ve stant here lifing, dere is always hope, always. Dit not Gott pring vater for Israel from der dry rock of Horeb? Dit Gott not sent quail in der vilderness? Is Gott’s great arm come veak? No, it is yust so strong as effer it vos. Vot you vant is to go far from here and pegin all ofer again vere no one knows you. Here is death, dere is safeness, hope, a new life—a petter von.”
“How am I to get there? All I have are these few rags, this shattered body, and the fragments of a woman’s broken heart.”
As the poor creature sobbed out these words, Loney came quietly into the room, and as he heard them the child knelt silently behind the bench and folded his thin hands in prayer unobserved.
Morris stood a moment silent, and then he said, solemnly:
“In the name of my dead vife, and of mein lifing child, I vill help you to go, if you vill promise me dot you will nefer drink again.”
Helen turned and fixed her humid eyes upon the sign, and again read aloud, “It is never too late to mend.” Then her eyes fell on the kneeling child, and she crossed to the side where he was, and, placing her trembling hand on his head, asked tremulously:
“What are you doing, my boy?”