CHAPTER XV
MODERN MAGIC
While the party returned to the cruiser, Jack, the beach comber, betook himself to a land-locked lagoon where he proceeded to begin his return to self-respect by taking his first bath for a long time. The chums, excited and with much gusto, assembled a set of clothes to give him.
“Now, Cliff, Tom and Nicky,” said Mr. Gray, “you all know that you feel much better if you are dressed up when you go among people. It gives you self-respect. That is the way we will work with this man: we will build up his idea that there is something good in him yet, and then Bill will offer him a chance to go away from here and work his way back to decency. Bill says he can use him on his ranch.”
“That ought to be fine,” Tom agreed. “And I guess we will let Cliff’s father do most of the talking.”
“After we get him on board and feed him well, we will have a talk with him,” Mr. Gray conceded. “At that time, make only what I would call positive statements——”
“I know,” Cliff said. “‘I can,’ instead of ‘I can’t,’ and ‘We will’ instead of ‘We wish.’”
“Exactly that,” Mr. Gray nodded. “We will first substitute a picture in his mind that will make him feel like his old self. Then we will make him want something better than this terrible life he is living, not offering him a reward, but letting him see that he wants it enough to make a try for it. Then probably he will try to remember and tell us what we want to know—he will feel that in helping us he is helping himself.”
“We’ll do it!” declared Nicky. “I know we will!”
The trio rowed to the lagoon with the bundle of clothes and when Jack had them on he seemed to take on a different look; and, as if he felt already more like a man, he stood up straighter and his shoulders did not hunch down so much.
After a good meal and his first decent shave for, perhaps, years, he looked and acted like a different person—and declared that he felt that way.