etween them.

It had come, the moment to bring the boy around; Frank had waited for it
in the weeks since he had known the story. In this silence he mapped out
his argument, as he would have prepared a brief.

"How much has your father ever helped you, Jimmie?"

"Not much. We've always been poor, you know."

"Because he drank?"

"Yes, he never could keep a job but so long."

"Not even when you were small?"

"I wasn't with him then. When my mother got--when she left him, she took
me with her. Then she died, and I was with my grandmother awhile, then I
lived with him until I came here."

"Are you very fond of him?"

"No, Frank, I'm not; not a bit. He never did anything for my mother or
for me, to make me."

"I don't see why you lived with him then."

"He'd behave himself better. I had a sort of influence over him. He was
afraid of me, or ashamed, or something, and I stuck to him to keep him
straight. But, oh! I hated it, and when he got going all right, I cut
loose and came here."

"What sort is the old lady? W. C. T. U. and all that kind of thing, I
suppose?"

"Something on that order."

The Oracle leaned forward until his chest came almost between his bent
knees, as was his wont when he clinched his arguments.

"I suppose you've never figured it out that people of her way of
thinking would call what little drinking you do at Mayfield 'drinking in
low saloons?'"

By his silence Jimmie admitted that there was something in the position.
Frank followed up his lead.

"So it may be nothing very bad after all. But let's suppose it is;
suppose he has slid back into the worst of his old ways, is it going to
pay to go on and break things all up for yourself, for the purpose of
trying to bolster him up? It seems to me you would let your enthusiasm
get away with your common sense. But it's your business, Jimmie. Only
the thing that gets me is the blooming uselessness of it all. What can
you do?"

"I can work."

"You could do that before you came here. You see, it was all right
before, when your plans weren't formed. Now it means not only his
sliding back, but yours too. You know as well as I do that a half-baked
man isn't worth a whoop, not a solitary whoop. You've got to drop down
into mediocrity just when you are on the way up to something. And after
sacrificing yourself, perhaps, it will have been for nothing. You can't
cure that thing in a month, nor a year, nor two years. If he is
drinking, regular a