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of Uncle Jim.
"
There was always something a bit wrong with him," she said, "but
nothing you mightn't have hoped for, not till they took him and
carried him off and reformed him....
"
He was cruel to the hens and chickings, it's true, and stuck a knife
into another boy, but then I've seen him that nice to a cat, nobody
could have been kinder. I'm sure he didn't do no 'arm to that cat
whatever anyone tries to make out of it. I'd never listen to that....
It was that reformatory ruined him. They put him along of a lot of
London boys full of ideas of wickedness, and because he didn't mind
pain--and he don't, I will admit, try as I would--they made him think
himself a hero. Them boys laughed at the teachers they set over them,
laughed and mocked at them--and I don't suppose they was the best
teachers in the world; I don't suppose, and I don't suppose anyone
sensible does suppose that everyone who goes to be a teacher or a
chapl'in or a warder in a Reformatory Home goes and changes right away
into an Angel of Grace from Heaven--and Oh, Lord! where was I?"
"
What did they send him to the Reformatory for?"
"Playing truant and stealing. He stole right enough--stole the money
from an old woman, and what was I to do when it came to the trial but
say what I knew. And him like a viper a-looking at me--more like a
viper than a human boy. He leans on the bar and looks at me. 'All
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