robably."

"What is the other thing you wish to tell me?"

"Because your eyes are slate blue like your mother's. I loved your
mother, Kitty," said Cutty, blinking into his pipe. "And the singular
fact is, your father knew but your mother never did. I was never able
to tell your mother after your father died. Their bodies were separated,
but not their spirits."

Kitty nodded. So that was it? Poor Cutty!

"I make this confession because I want you to understand my attitude
toward you. I am going to elect myself as your special guardian so
long as I'm in New York. From now on, when I ask you to do something,
understand that I believe it best for you. If my suspicions are correct
we are not dealing with fools but with madmen. The most dangerous human
being, Kitty, is an honest man with a half-baked or crooked idea; and
that's what this world pother, Bolshevism, is--honest men with crooked
ideas, carrying the torch of anarchism and believing it enlightenment.
What makes them tear down things? Every beautiful building is only a
monument to their former wretchedness; and so they annihilate. None of
them actually knows what he wants. A thousand will-o'-the-wisps in front
of them, and all alike. A thousand years to throw off the shackles,
and they expect Utopia in ten minutes! It makes you want to weep.
Socialism--the brotherhood of man--is a beautiful thing theoretically;
but it is like some plays--they read well but do not act. Lopping off
heads, believing them to be ideas!"

"The poor things!"

"That's it. Though I betray them I pity them. Democracy; slowly and
surely. As prickly with faults as a cactus pear; but every year there
are less prickles. We don't stand still or retrogress; we keep going on
and up. Take this town. Think of It to-day and compare it with the town
your father knew. There's the bell. I imagine that will be Harrison. If
we can move this chap will you go to a hotel for the night?"

"I'm going to stay here, Cutty. That's final."

Cutty sighed.

CHAPTER IX

At the precinct station the squat man gave a name and an address to
the bored sergeant at the desk, passed out a cigar, lit one himself,
expressed some innocuous opinions upon one or two topics of the day, and
walked leisurely out of the precinct. He wanted to laugh. These pigheads
had never thought to question his presence in the backyard of the house
in Seventy-ninth Street. It was the way he had carried himself.
Those years in New Y