“Perhaps you’re right”—­her manner had grown softer—­“and because I’ve thought of this, I am going to send him away to school this autumn—­in a few weeks.  Much as it will hurt me to part with them, I am going to send both of my children away from me.  I have made the arrangements.”

Insensibly the note of triumph had crept into her voice.  By the simple statement of her purpose she had vindicated her motherhood to this man.  She stood clear now of his aspersions on her wisdom and her devotion.

“I don’t know much about girls,” he replied, seating himself on the opposite side of the table, where the green light from the shaded lamp fell directly on his features.  “I can’t remember ever noticing one until I grew up, and then I was afraid to death of them, particularly when they were young—­but I’ve been a boy, and I know all about boys.  There isn’t a blooming thing you could tell me about boys!” he concluded with animation.

“And you think that all boys are alike?”

“More or less under the skin.  Of course some are washed and some are dirty—­I was dirty—­but they’re all boys, every last one of them, and all boys are just kids.  With the first money I made out West, I started a lodging-house for them—­the dirty ones—­down in the Bowery,” he added.  “They can get a wash and a supper and a night’s lodging in a bed with real sheets any night in the year.”

She was suddenly interested.  “Do you care for boys just because you were a boy yourself?” she asked.

“Because I was such a God-forsaken little chap, I guess.  You were never down in a cellar, I suppose, the kind of cellar people live in?  Well, I was born in one, and my father had killed himself the week before because he was ill with consumption, and couldn’t get work.  He’d been a teamster, and he lost his job when he came down with pneumonia, and after they let him out of the hospital, he looked such a scarehead that nobody would employ him.  After he died, my mother struggled on somehow, taking in washing or scrubbing floors—­God knows how she managed it!—­and by the time I was five, and precious big for my age, I was in the street selling papers.  I used to say I was seven when anybody asked me, but I wasn’t more than five; and I remember as plain as if it was yesterday, the way mother used to take me to a corner of Broadway, and put a bundle of papers in my arms, and how I used to hang on to the coppers when the bigger boys tried to get ’em away from me.  Sometimes I’d get an extra dime or nickel, and then we’d have Irish stew or fried onions for supper.  After my mother died, when I was about eight, I still kept on selling papers because I didn’t know what else to do, but I didn’t have any place to sleep then so I used to crawl into machine shops or areas (he said ‘aries’) or warehouses, when the watchmen weren’t looking.  In summer I’d sometimes hide under a bush in the park, and the policeman would never see me until I slipped by him in the morning.  There was one policeman I hated like the devil, and I used to swear that I’d get even with him if it took me all the rest of my life.”  For a moment he paused, brooding complacently.  “I did get even with him, too,” he added, “and it didn’t take me more than twenty years.”