I'll have the janitor move them upstairs. You sleep there
to-night, and to-morrow morning come to see me at the school."
"All right, Miss Deborah, much obliged. I'll be all right. Good-night,
sir--"
"Good-night, my boy," said Roger, and suddenly he cleared his throat. He
followed his daughter down the stairs. A few minutes she talked with the
janitor, then joined her father in the court.
"I'm sorry I took you up there," she said. "I didn't know the man was
sick."
"Who are they?" he asked.
"Poor people," she said. And Roger flinched.
"Who is this boy?"
"A neighbor of theirs. His mother, who was a widow, died about two years
ago. He was left alone and scared to death lest he should be 'put away' in
some big institution. He got Mrs. Berry to take him in, and to earn his
board he began selling papers instead of coming to our school. So our
school visitor looked him up. Since then I have been paying his board from
a fund I have from friends uptown, and so he has finished his schooling.
He's to graduate next week. He means to be a stenographer."
"How old is he?"
"Seventeen," she replied.
"How was he crippled? Born that way?"
"No. When he was a baby his mother dropped him one Saturday night when she
was drunk. He has never been able to sit down. He can lie down or he can
stand. He's always in pain, it never stops. I learned that from the doctor
I took him to see. But whenever you ask him how he feels you get the same
answer always: 'Fine, thank you.
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