Short Stories
as though charging him with crime.
And as in denial of guilt, the one-legged boy replied: "It ain't
nothin'. I jes' caught a cold last week, Mr. Inspector, that's all."
In the end the one-legged boy went out of the room with the
inspector, the latter accompanied by the anxious and protesting
superintendent. After that monotony settled down again. The
long morning and the longer afternoon wore away and the whis-
tle blew for quitting time. Darkness had already fallen when
Johnny passed out through the factory gate. In the interval the
sun had made a golden ladder of the sky, flooded the world
with its gracious warmth, and dropped down and disappeared
in the west behind a ragged sky-line of housetops.
Supper was the family meal of the day—the one meal at
which Johnny encountered his younger brothers and sisters. It
partook of the nature of an encounter, to him, for he was very
old, while they were distressingly young. He had no patience
with their excessive and amazing juvenility. He did not under-
stand it. His own childhood was too far behind him. He was like
an old and irritable man, annoyed by the turbulence of their
young spirits that was to him arrant silliness. He glowered si-
lently over his food, finding compensation in the thought that
they would soon have to go to work. That would take the edge
off of them and make them sedate and dignified—like him. Thus
it was, after the fashion of the human, that Johnny made of him-
self a yardstick with which to measure the universe.
During the meal, his mother explained in various ways and
with infinite repetition that she was trying to do the best she
could; so that it was with relief, the scant meal ended, that John-
ny shoved back his chair and arose. He debated for a moment
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