detestation of women. Mrs. Davis, in ex- pressing her feelings, expressed those of all the others: "I hate so to think of the pore little feller goin' to one o' them childern's homes. The boys goin' around in them there drab clothes o' theirs allus look like pris'ners to me, an' they ain't much better off."
"An' then childern do learn so much weekedness in them places from the older ones," put in another.
"Oh, as fur that matter, he'll learn devilment soon enough anywhere," snapped Mrs. Warren, "with that owdacious father o' his before him. I wouldn't take the child by no means, though his mother an' me was friends, fur blood's bound to tell, an' with sich blood as he's got in him I don't know what he'll come to, an' I'm shore I don't want to be a-raisin' no gallus-birds."
The women felt rather relieved that Mrs. Warren so signally washed her hands of Freddie. That was one danger he had escaped. The woman in question had, as she said, been a close friend of Margaret's, and, as such, an aider in her habits of intemperance. It had been apprehended that her association with the mother might lead her to take the child.
