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 whistle 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 understand 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 silently 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 himself 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 Johnny shoved back his chair
and arose. He debated for a moment between bed and the front door,
and finally went out the latter. He did not go far. He sat down on the
stoop, his knees drawn up and his narrow shoulders drooping forward, his
elbows on his knees and the palms of his hands supporting his chin.

As he sat there, he did no thinking. He was just resting. So far as his
mind was concerned, it was asleep. His brothers and sisters came out,
and with other children played noisily about him. An electric globe at
the corner lighted their frolics. He was peevish and irritable, that
they knew; but the spirit of adventure lured them into teasing him. They
joined hands before him, and, keeping time with their bodies, chanted in
his face weird and uncomplimentary doggerel.