"The very chap, I suspect," answered Theodore, laughing.
Tommy sewed away energetically before he exploded his next remark.
"I wish you had rowed them out of this house, I vum I do. Mother, she don't give me no peace of my life with talkings and cryings, and one thing and another, and a fellow don't know what to do."
The subject was fairly launched at last quite naturally, and what was better still, by Tommy himself; and then ensued a long and earnest conversation—and in proof that the visit had been productive of one effect that the mother had hoped for and prophesied, Tommy stood up and fixed earnest, admiring eyes on his visitor as he was about to leave, and said eagerly:
"There isn't much a fellow couldn't do to please you if he should set out."
"And how much to please the dear mother, whose only son he is?" answered Theodore, quickly.
Tommy's eyes drooped, and his cheeks grew very red.
"I do mean to," he said at last. "I mean to all over, every day; but the fellows giggle and—and—well I don't know, it all gets wrong before I think."
On the whole Theodore understood his subject very well—a good-natured, well-meaning, easily-tempted boy, not safe in a house where liquor was sold or used, certainly not safe where it was freely offered and its refusal laughed at. He even hesitated about going to Mr. Hastings', so sure was he that even with the most favorable results from the call, Tommy would be unsafe in the Euclid House; but then there were other boys who might be reached in this way, and there was his promise to the old lady, and there was besides his eager desire to see what Mr. Hastings would do or say. On the whole he decided to go.
"I do manage to have the most extraordinary errands to this house," he soliloquized, while standing on the steps of Hastings' Hall awaiting the answer to his ring. "I wonder how circumstances will develop this evening?"