Tom said never a word. He had played his part in the proceedings, and he was through.
“Couldn’t yer leave him come over jist till I make him a cup o’ coffee?” Mrs. O’Connor begged.
“They’ll give him his dinner at the station, ma’am,” the policeman answered.
Mrs. O’Connor stood there choking as Tom was led up the street, the full juvenile force of Barrel Alley thronging after him.
“Wouldn’ yer leave me pull my strap up?” he asked the policeman.
The officer released his arm, taking him by the neck instead, and the last that Mrs. O’Connor saw Tom was hauling his one rebellious strand of suspender up into place.
“Poor lad, I don’t know what’ll become uv him now,” said Mrs. O’Connor, pausing on her doorstep to speak with a neighbor.
“And them things over there an’ night comin’ on,” said her companion. “I wisht that alarm clock was took away—seems as if ‘twas laughin’ at the whole thing—like.”
“‘Tain’t only his bein’ arrested,” said Mrs. O’Connor, “but ther’ ain’t no hope for him at all, as I kin see. Ther’s no one can inflooence him.”
In Court, the next morning, the judge ruled out all reference to the disfigurement of Mrs. Slade’s portrait as being “incompetent and irrelevant,” and when the “assault and battery” could not be made to seem “an act done in self-defense and by reason of the imminent peril of the accused,” Tom was taken to the “jug” to spend the balance of the day and to ponder on the discovery that a “guy” has no right to “slam” a marshal just because he sets a dirty beer can on his mother’s picture.