Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/219

 for you, Joan—little, little Joan? Have you thought it through?"

"What through?"

"What he will do, and you will do, when he is freed—if he is. How long since he was jailed?"

"More than three months, Dads."

"That's it. All that time, he has not had his hands on a girl; he has not seen any woman, but his mother, except through the holes of a double steel screen. He will see women in court to-morrow and during the trial; he will see you and several others of his friends, but he will be shut up at night in the jail until the tremendous day when he is freed.

"That night he will not spend alone. Do you want to be the girl to spend it with him?"

Joan withdrew her hand, thrusting it under the covers.

"Do you care," demanded Dads, "that if he does not have you, he will be with another girl?"

"He always," whispered Joan, with lips and tongue dry, "he always was with other girls. That was Ket."

"But he didn't have you. Is he going to?"

"He's going to have me," she whispered, "to make him a musician." She gasped, "Why, that's all my life, Dads!"

"How's he done with the book you bought him?" challenged Dads.

"He hasn't read it, yet."

"Not even read it!"

"That's not his fault. The jail's the trouble. The jail isn't what I thought it'd be for music. I guess that men who were made great in jails weren't in ones much like the Cook County jail. Everybody's crazy about Ket in jail, Dads; he's a riot, when he plays his jazz, and he's written a lot of jazz in jail; but that's all he wants to do. He likes to please people, you see; and jazz does. But