ask him how he feels, he always says,
'Fine, thank you.'" Here Roger turned to Allan. "I wish you'd take the
boy," he said, "to the finest specialist in town, and see what can be done
for his spine. I'll pay any price."

"There won't be any price," said Allan, "but I'll see to it at once."

He had John examined the same week.

"Well?" asked Roger when next they met.

"Well," said Baird, "it isn't good news."

"You mean he's hopeless?" Allan nodded:

"It's Pott's disease, and it's gone too far. John is eighteen. He may live
to be thirty."

"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