He had already forgot the toothpaste affair.
He was now avoiding the dietitian just as, a month ago, he had been putting himself in her way.
He was so busy avoiding her that he had long since forgot the reason for it; soon he had forgotten the trip too, since he was never to know that there was any connection between them.
Now and then he thought of it, hazily and vaguely.
But that was only when he would look toward the door to the furnace room and remember the man who used to sit there and watch him and who was now gone, completely, without leaving any trace, not even the splint chair in the doorway, after the fashion of all who departed from there.
Where he may have gone to also the child did not even think or even wonder.
One evening they came to the schoolroom and got him.
It was two weeks before Christmas.
Two of the young women—the dietitian was not one—took him to the bathroom and washed him and combed his damp hair and dressed him in clean overalls and fetched him to the matron’s office.
In the office sat a man, a stranger.
And he looked at the man and he knew before the matron even spoke.
Perhaps memory knowing, knowing beginning to remember; perhaps even desire, since five is still too young to have learned enough despair to hope.
Perhaps he remembered suddenly the train ride and the food, since even memory did not go much further back than that.
“Joseph,” the matron said, “how would you like to go and live with some nice people in the country?”
He stood there, his ears and face red and burning with harsh soap and harsh towelling, in the stir new overalls, listening to the stranger.
He had looked once and saw a thickish man with a close brown beard and hair cut close though not recently.
Hair and beard both had a hard, vigorous quality, unsilvered, as though the pigmentation were impervious to the forty and more years which the face revealed.
The eyes were lightcolored, cold.
He wore a suit of hard, decent black.
On his knee rested a black hat held in a blunt clean hand shut, even on the soft felt of the hat, into a fist.
Across his vest ran a heavy silver watch chain.
His thick black shoes were planted side by side; they had been polished by hand.
Even the child of five years, looking at him, knew that he did not use tobacco himself and would not tolerate it in others.
But he did not look at the man because of his eyes.
He could feel the man looking at him though, with a stare cold and intent and yet not deliberately harsh.
It was the same stare with which he might have examined a horse or a second hand plow, convinced beforehand that he would see flaws, convinced beforehand that he would buy.
His voice was deliberate, infrequent, ponderous; the voice of a man who demanded that he be listened to not so much with attention but in silence.
“And you either cannot or will not tell me anything more about his parentage.”
The matron did not look at him.
Behind her glasses her eyes apparently had jellied, for the time at least.
She said immediately, almost a little too immediately:
“We make no effort to ascertain their parentage.
As I told you before, he was left on the doorstep here on Christmas eve will be five years this two weeks.
If the child’s parentage is important to you, you had better not adopt one at all.”
“I would not mean just that,” the stranger said.
His tone now was a little placative.
He contrived at once to apologise without surrendering one jot of his conviction. “I would have thought to talk with Miss Atkins (this was the dietitian’s name) since it was with her I have been in correspondence.”
Again the matron’s voice was cold and immediate, speaking almost before his had ceased:
“I can perhaps give you as much information about this or any other of our children as Miss Atkins can, since her official connection here is only with the diningroom and kitchen.
It just happened that in this case she was kind enough to act as secretary in our correspondence with you.”
“It’s no matter,” the stranger said. “It’s no matter.
I had just thought …”
“Just thought what?
We force no one to take our children, nor do we force the children to go against their wishes, if their reasons are sound ones.
That is a matter for the two parties to settle between themselves.
We only advise.”
“Ay,” the stranger said. “It’s no matter, as I just said to you.
I’ve no doubt the tyke will do.
He will find a good home with Mrs. McEachern and me.
We are not young now, and we like quiet ways.