“I’ve got something to say to you about Davy. I brought back a story and a fortune from my other trip down here. The story was more important by a whole lot. It changed everything for me. I thought I’d only have to tell it, to change others. That didn’t work. But Davy listened, and he wasn’t the same afterward. “I didn’t understand him at first. I used to think when he didn’t speak, he was bored. I used to think I had to entertain him, buy him with gifts. But I was wrong. He was thinking things out for himself all the time. He was puzzled at first why any one cared to be good to him and be a friend to him--God, what a price the world must pay for making boys as strange to kindness as that.... But this is what I want to say. He believed in me long ago in Lot & Company’s. I succeeded in making him believe in me again. And because he believed in me, he believed in my story, and when he heard that--he wasn’t the same afterward. “I tell you, boys are full of wonderful things, but the world has shut the door on them. All we’ve got to do is to be patient and kind and keep the door open, and we’ll have human heroes about us presently, instead of wolves and foxes and parrots and apes.... I learned that from Davy Acton. After he accepted me, he got my story--and that showed me that my work is with boys, and that first I’ve got to make them believe in me. I’ve got to be the kind of a man to win that. We’ll all pull together--you and Davy and that other and I. “I’m going to help Davy, and I’m going to help boys. They’re not set. They change. They are open to dreams and ready for action. They can forget themselves long enough to listen. The world has treated them badly; the world has been a stupid fool in bringing up its children. Why, it’s half luck if we manage to amount to anything! I think I know now how to do better. I’m going to try. Why, I’d spend five years and all I have to give one boy his big, deep chance of being as human as God intended. I’ll help boys to find their work, show them how to be clean and fit and strong. I’ll show them that _getting_ is but an incident, and when carried too far becomes the crime and the hell of the world.... He’s coming back--and he’s found the book, too. I must use it----” He had told his story in a kind of gust, and the little woman had listened like a sensitive-plate, her eyes brimming, her son moving higher and higher in a future that was safe and green and pure.... It had come out at last for Bellair. He was happy, for he knew that this which had been born to-night, with the help of the mother’s listening, was the right good thing--the thing that had come home from hard experience to the heart of a simple man. “Davy,” he said, “I’ve got a suspicion that your mother could eat something. Call a steward, lad.” She started and fumbled for her handkerchief. “Do you know--that is--I might try a bite, Mr. Bellair----”