“But I tell you, Baird, I’ll do anything!”

“There’s almost nothing you can do.  If he had been taken when he was a baby, he might have been cured and given a chance.  But the same mother who dropped him then, when she was full of liquor, just went to the druggist on her block, and after listening to his advice she bought some patent medicine, a steel jacket and some crutches, and thought she’d done her duty.”

“But there must be something we can do!” retorted Roger angrily.

“Yes,” said Baird, “we can make him a little more comfortable.  And meanwhile we can help Deborah here to get hold of other boys like John and give ’em a chance before it’s too late—­keep them from being crippled for life because their mothers were too blind and ignorant to act in time.”  Baird’s voice had a ring of bitterness.

“Most of ’em love their children,” Roger said uneasily.  Baird turned on him a steady look.

“Love isn’t enough,” he retorted.  “The time is coming very soon when we’ll have the right to guard the child not only when it’s a baby but even before it has been born.”

Roger drew closer to John after this.  Often behind the beaming smile he would feel the pain and loneliness, and the angry grit which was fighting it down.  And so he would ask John home to supper on nights when nobody else was there.  One day late in the afternoon they were walking home together along the west side of Madison Square.  The big open space was studded with lights sparkling up at the frosty stars, in a city, a world, a universe that seemed filled with the zest and the vigor of life.  Out of these lights a mighty tower loomed high up into the sky.  And stopping on his crutches, a grim small crooked figure in all this rushing turmoil, John set his jaws, and with his shrewd and twinkling eyes fixed on the top of the tower, he said,

“I meant to tell you, Mr. Gale.  You was asking me once what I wanted to be.  And I want to be an architect.”

“Do, eh,” grunted Roger.  He, too, looked up at that thing in the stars, and there was a tightening at his throat.  “All right,” he added, presently, “why not start in and be one?”

“How?” asked John alertly.

“Well, my boy,” said Roger, “I’d hate to lose you in the office—­”

“Yes, sir, and I’d hate to go.”  Just then the big clock in the tower began to boom the hour, and a chill struck into Roger.

“You’d have to,” he said gruffly.  “You haven’t any time to lose!  I mean,” he hastily added, “that for a job as big as that you’d need a lot of training.  But if it’s what you want to be, go right ahead.  I’ll back you.  My son-in-law is a builder at present.  I’ll talk to him and get his advice.  We may be able to arrange to have you go right into his office, begin at the bottom and work straight up.”  In silence for a moment John hobbled on by Roger’s side.

“I’d hate to leave your place,” he said.