The Debtor Part 37

"Gracious!" cried Anna Carroll. "The child means the grocer! No, dear, he isn't asked."

"Why, I never thought!" said Charlotte. "No, dear, he isn't asked."

"Why not?" asked Eddy.

"We couldn't ask everybody, honey," replied Anna. "Now you must not hinder us another minute."

But Eddy danced persistently before them, barring their progress.

"He isn't everybody," he said. "He's the nicest man in this town. Why didn't you ask him? Didn't you think he was nice enough, I'd like to know?"

"Of course he is nice, dear," said Charlotte; "very nice." She flushed a little.

"Why didn't you ask him, then?" demanded Eddy. "I call it mean."

Anna took Eddy by his small shoulders and set him aside.

"Eddy," she said, sternly, "not another word. We could not ask the grocer to your sister's wedding. Now, don't say another word about it. Your sister and I are too busy to bother with you."

"I don't see why you won't ask him because he's a grocer," Eddy called, indignantly, after her. "He's the nicest man here, and he always lets us have things, whether we pay him or not. I have heard you say so. I think you are awful mean to take his groceries, and eat 'em, and use them for Ina's wedding, and then not ask him, just because he is a grocer."

Anna's laughter floated back, and the boy wondered angrily what she was laughing at. Then he went by himself about righting wrongs. He hunted about until he found on his mother's desk some left-over wedding-cards, and he sent invitations to both the wedding and reception to Randolph Anderson and his mother, which were received that night.

Randolph carried them home, and his mother examined them with considerable satisfaction.

"We might go to the ceremony," said she, with doubtful eyes on her son's face.

"I really think we had better not, mother."

"You think we had better not, simply to the ceremony? Of course I admit that we could not go to the reception at the house, since we have not called, but the ceremony?"

"I think we had better not; this very late invitation--"

"Oh, Randolph, that is easily accounted for. It is so easy to overlook an invitation."

But Randolph persisted in his dissent to the proposition to attend.

He was quite sure how the invitation had happened to come at all, and later on in the day he was confirmed in his opinion when Eddy Carroll made a rush into his office and inquired, breathlessly, if he had received his invitation and if he was coming.

"Because I found out you hadn't been asked, and I told them it was mean, and I sent you one myself," said he, with generous indignation.

Anderson finally compromised by going with him to the church and viewing the completed decorations. He also presented him with a package of candy from his gla.s.s jars when he followed him back to the store.

"Say, you are a brick," Eddy a.s.sured him. "When I am a man I am going to keep a grocery store. I'd a great deal rather do that than have a business like papa's. If you have the things yourself in your own store, you don't have to owe anybody for them. Good-bye. If you should get those letters done, you come, and your mother, and I'll look out you have everything you want; and I'll save seats in the pew where I sit, too."

"Thank you," said Anderson, and was conscious of an exceedingly warm feeling for the child flying out of the store with his package of sweets under his arm.

Chapter XX

Carroll had arrived home very unexpectedly that Sunday morning. The family were at the breakfast-table. As a usual thing, Sunday-morning breakfast at the Carrolls' was a desultory and uncertain ceremony, but when Major Arms was there it was promptly on the table at eight o'clock. He had not yet, in the relaxation of civilian life, gotten over the regular habits acquired in the army.

"It isn't hard you'll find the old man on you, sweetheart," he told Ina, "but there's one thing he's got to have, and that is his breakfast, and a good old Southern one, with plenty to eat, at eight o'clock, or you'll find him as cross as a bear all day to pay for it."

Ina laughed and blushed, and sprinkled the sugar on her cereal.

"Ina will not mind," said Mrs. Carroll. "She and Charlotte have never been sleepy-heads."

Eddy glanced resentfully at his mother. He was a little jealous in these days. He had never felt himself so distinctly in the background as during these preparations for his sister's wedding.

"I am not a sleepy-head, either, Amy," said he.

"It is a pity you are not," said she, and everybody laughed.

"Eddy is always awake before anybody in the house," said Ina, "and prowling around and sniffing for breakfast."

"And you bet there is precious little breakfast to sniff lately, unless we have company," said Eddy, still in his resentful little pipe; and for a second there was silence.

Then Mrs. Carroll laughed, not a laugh of embarra.s.sment, but a delightful, spontaneous peal, and the others, even Major Arms, who had looked solemnly nonplussed, joined her.

Eddy ate his cereal with a sly eye of delight upon the mirthful faces. "Yes," said he, further. "I wish you'd stay here all the time, Major Arms, and stay engaged to Ina instead of marrying her; then all the rest of us would have enough to eat. We always have plenty when you are here."

He looked around for further applause, but he did not get it.

Charlotte gave him a sharp poke in the side to inst.i.tute silence.

"What are you poking me for, Charlotte?" he asked, aggrievedly. She paid no attention to him.

"Don't you think it is strange we don't hear from papa?" said Charlotte.

Major Arms stared at her. "Do you mean to say you have not heard from him since he went away?" he asked.

"Not a word," replied Mrs. Carroll, cheerfully.

"I am a little uneasy about papa," said Ina, but she went on eating her breakfast quite composedly.

"I should be if I had ever known him to fail to take care of himself," said Mrs. Carroll.

"It's the other folks that had better look out," remarked Eddy, with perfect innocence, though would-be wit. He looked about for applause.

Arms's eyes twinkled, but he bent over his plate solemnly.

"Eddy, you are talking altogether too much," Anna Carroll said.

"You are unusually silly this morning, Eddy," said Charlotte. "There is no point in such a remark as that."

"You said Arthur had gone to Chicago?" Arms said to Mrs. Carroll.