Joe goes to the chair
to-morrow at six."
Deborah went to the sofa and sat down inertly. Roger remained motionless,
and a dull chill crept over him.
"So you see my work is personal," he heard her mutter presently. All at
once she seemed so far away, such a stranger to him in this life of hers.
"By George, it's horrible!" he said. "I'm sorry you went to see the boy!"
"I'm glad," was his daughter's quick retort. "I've been getting much too
sure of myself--of my school, I mean, and what it can do. I needed this to
bring me back to the kind of world we live in!"
"What do you mean?" he roughly asked.
"I mean there are schools and prisons! And gallows and electric chairs! And
I'm for schools! They've tried their jails and gallows for whole black
hideous centuries! What good have they done? If they'd given Joe back to
the school and me, I'd have had him a fireman in a year! I know, because I
studied him hard! He'd have _grown_ fighting fires, he would have _saved_
lives!"
Again she stopped, with a catch of her breath. In suspense he watched her
angry struggle to regain control of herself. She sat bolt upright, rigid;
her birthmark showed a fiery red. In a few moments he saw her relax.
"But of course," she added wearily, "it's much more complex than that. A
school is nothing nowadays--just by itself alone, I mean--it's only a part
of a city's life--which for most tenement children is either very dull and
hard, or cheap and false and overexciting.
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