"I suppose you wonder why I couldn't take the position?" he went on.
"That's your affair."
"But I want to tell you. I--I wouldn't be allowed to take it. I am
not a free agent."
"Perhaps we could help you to be one," I suggested.
"I don't know. Maybe you wouldn't want to have anything more to do
with me. Oh, there's a lot I want to tell you!" he cried imploringly.
"But I don't know how you'll take it."
"Try me."
"Would you--would you kick me out," he said, agitated and breathless,
"if you knew that my dad had committed a forgery, if you knew that he
had died in prison?"
"Why, no," I said calmly, "I suspect you were not responsible for that."
A sigh of relief escaped him. "You are kind!--But that's only the
beginning," he went on. "But I feel I can tell you now. I'm in an
awful hole. I suppose you will think I'm a weak character for not
trying to get out of it more, and I am weak, but I didn't know what to
do!"
"Tell me all about it," I said.
And he did; all about Lorina and Foxy and Jumbo as he knew them. They
didn't trust him far. He knew nothing of their actual operations, but
his honest young heart told him they were crooks. Lorina held him
under a spell of terror. He had not up to this time been able to
conceive of the idea of escaping her. There are those who would blame
the boy, I have no doubt, but I am not one of them. I have seen too
often that a mind which may afterwards become strong and self-reliant
is at Ralph's age fatally subservient to older minds. Those who would
blame him should remember that until he met the doctor and me he had
not a disinterested friend in the world. They must grant that he
instantly reacted to kindness and decent feelings.
"How did you first get into this mess?" I asked, strongly curious.
"I'd have to tell you my whole life to explain that."
"Fire away."