The Debtor Part 58

"Why didn't we have china like this instead of that we have?"

demanded Eddy of Charlotte.

"Hush, dear," said Charlotte. "This china is so very old and valuable, you know, that not every one could--that we could not-- I believe we had some very pretty china in our family, but it all got broken," she added.

"It didn't begin to be so pretty as this," said Eddy. "I remember it.

The cups were like bowls, and there were black wreaths around them.

There weren't any handles, either. I don't see why we couldn't have got some china as pretty as this. Suppose it was valuable. Why, I don't believe that we have now is paid for. What difference would it make?"

Charlotte blushed so that Mrs. Anderson felt an impulse to draw the poor, little, troubled head upon her shoulder and tell her not to mind.

"Let me give you some more of the quince preserve, dear," she said, in the softest voice; and Charlotte, who did not want it, pa.s.sed her little gla.s.s dish to take advantage of the opportunity afforded her to cover her confusion.

"What difference would it make, say, Charlotte?" persisted Eddy.

"Hush, dear," said Charlotte, painfully.

"Here, son, pa.s.s your plate for this chicken," said Anderson; and Eddy, with a shrewd glance of half-comprehension from one to the other, pa.s.sed his plate and subsided, after a muttered remark that he didn't see why Charlotte minded.

"Wasn't that a bully supper?" he whispered, pressing close to his sister when they entered the sitting-room after the meal was finished.

"Hush, dear," she whispered back.

"Ain't you glad you stayed? You wouldn't, if it hadn't been for me."

Charlotte turned and looked at him sharply. Mrs. Anderson had lingered in the dining-room to give some directions to the maid, and Anderson had stepped out on the porch for a second's puff at a cigar.

"Eddy Carroll," said she, in a whisper, "you didn't?"

Eddy faced her defiantly. "Didn't what?"

"You didn't tell a lie about that?"

Eddy lowered his eyes, frowned, and sc.r.a.ped one foot in a way he had when embarra.s.sed. "Amy did say something about it was such a pleasant day and Addison," he replied, doggedly.

"But did she say they were really going there, and would not be back?"

"Anna said if they went there they could not get back."

"But did she say they were going? Tell me the truth, Eddy Carroll."

Eddy sc.r.a.ped.

"I see they did not," said Charlotte, severely.

"Eddy, I don't know what papa will say."

"I know," said Eddy, simply, with a curious mixture of ruefulness and defiance. Then he added: "If you want to be mean enough to tell on a feller, after he's been the means of your having such a supper as that (and you were hungry, too; you needn't say you wasn't; you ate an awful lot yourself), you can."

"I am not going to tell unless I am asked, when I certainly shall not tell a lie," replied Charlotte; "but papa will find it out himself, I am afraid, Eddy."

"I shouldn't wonder if he did," admitted Eddy.

"And then, you know--"

"Yes, I know; but I don't care. I have had that bully supper, anyhow.

He can't alter that. And, say, Charlotte."

"What?" asked Charlotte, severely. "I am ashamed of you, Eddy."

"I don't see why papa don't get a store, like him"--he jerked an expressive shoulder towards the scent of the cigar smoke--"and then we could have things as good as they do."

But then Charlotte turned on him with fierceness none the less intense, although necessarily subdued. "Eddy Carroll," she whispered, with a long-drawn sibilance, "to turn on your father, a man like papa! Eddy Carroll! Poor papa does the best he can, always, always."

"I suppose he does," said Eddy, quite loudly. "My, Charlotte, you needn't act as if you were going to bite a feller. I've had enough of--"

"What?" asked Charlotte.

"Nothing," said Eddy. His arm was paining him quite severely. It had been quite an ordeal for him to manage his knife and fork at supper without betrayal.

"What were you going to say?" persisted Charlotte.

"Nothing," said Eddy, doggedly--"nothing at all. Don't act so fierce, Charlotte. It isn't lady-like. Amy never speaks so awful quick."

Charlotte began putting on her hat, which had been left on the sitting-room table. "I am ashamed of you," she whispered again. "I was ashamed of you all tea-time."

Eddy whistled in a mannish fas.h.i.+on. Charlotte continued adjusting her hat and smoothing her fluff of dark hair. Her face, in the mirror which hung between the two front windows, looked not so angry as sorrowful, and with a dewy softness in the pretty eyes, and a slight quiver about the soft mouth. Eddy glanced several times at this reflected face; then he stole, with a sudden, swift motion, up behind his sister, threw his arms around her neck, although it hurt him cruelly, and laid his boyish cheek against her soft, girlish one.

"No, you need not think that will make up," whispered Charlotte. But she herself pressed her cheek tenderly against his, and then laughed softly. "Try not to do so again, dear," she said. "It mortified me, and it is not being a credit to papa. Think a little and try to remember how you have been brought up."

"Charlotte," whispered Eddy, in the softest, most furtive of whispers, casting a glance over his shoulder.

"What is it, dear?"

"I suppose they"--he indicated by a motion of his shoulder his host and hostess--"are just as nice people as--we are--as the Carrolls."

"Of course they are," replied Charlotte, hastily. She pushed Eddy away softly and began to fuss again with her hat. "We must go home right away," she said, "or they will worry."

"There is no need of his going home with you, as long as I am here,"

said Eddy.

"Of course not," replied Charlotte.

But it seemed that Anderson himself had other views, and his mother also, for although a sudden and not altogether easy suspicion had come to her, she whispered aside to him that he must certainly accompany the two home.

"It is quite dark already," she said, "and it is not fit for that child to go alone with n.o.body but that boy, after the fright she has had this afternoon. She is just in the condition now when a shadow might upset her. You really must go with her, Randolph."

"I have no intention of doing anything else, mother," Randolph replied, laughing. He had been, indeed, taking his overcoat from the tree in the hall when his mother had come out to speak to him.

Charlotte had said, on rising from the table, that she must go home at once.