he'll send you back to Barney." But Jonesy never having known anything
of fathers whose chief pleasure is in spending money to make little
sons happy, was not comforted by that promise as much as Keith thought
he ought to be.

"But I won't be here then," he sobbed. "They're goin' to put me in a
'sylum, and I can't get out for so long that maybe Barney will be dead
before we ever find each other again."

He was crying violently now.

"Who is going to put you in an asylum?" asked Malcolm, lifting an end of
the pillow under which Jonesy's head had burrowed, to hide the grief
that his eight-year-old manhood made him too proud to show.

"An old lady with white hair what comes here every day. The professor
said he would keep me if he wasn't so old and hard up, and she said as
how a 'sylum was the proper place for a child of the slums, and he said
yes if they wasn't nobody to care for 'em. But I've got somebody!" he
cried. "I've got Barney! Oh, _don't_ let them shut me up somewhere so I
can't never get back to Barney!"

"They don't shut you up when they send you to an asylum," said Malcolm.
"The one near here is a lovely big house, with acres of green grass
around it, and orchards and vine-yards, and they are ever so good to the
children, and give them plenty to eat and wear, and send them
to school."

"Barney wouldn't be there," sobbed Jonesy, diving under the pillow
again. "I don't want nothing but him."