“It is harder for her than for anybody else because she has to uphold Arthur for doing what she knows is wrong,” said Anna Carroll on the divan. She spoke as if to herself, pressing her hands to her ears.
“Papa is doing just right,” cried Charlotte, indignantly. “How dare you speak so about papa, Anna?”
“There is no use in speaking at all,” said Anna, wearily. “There never was. I am tired of this life and everything connected with it.”
Ina was weeping again convulsively. She also had put her hands to her ears, and her piteous little wet, quivering face was revealed.
“There is no need of either of you stopping up your ears,” said Charlotte. “You won't hear anything except the—blows. Eddy never makes a whimper. You know that.”
She spoke with a certain pride. She felt in her heart that a whimper from her little brother would be more than she herself could bear, and would also be more culpable than the offence for which he was being chastised. She said that her brother never whimpered, and yet she listened with a little fear that he might. But she need have had no apprehension. Up in his bedroom, standing before his father in his little thin linen blouse, for he had pulled off his jacket without being told, directly when he had first entered the room, the little boy endured the storm of blows, not only without a whimper, but without a quiver.
Eddy stood quite erect. His pretty face was white, his little hands hanging at his sides were clinched tightly, but he made not one sound or motion which betrayed pain or fear. He was counting the blows as they fell. He knew how many to expect. There were so many for running away and playing truant, and so many for lying, more for stealing, so many for all three. This time it was all three. Eddy counted while his father laid on the blows as regularly as a machine. When at last he stopped, Eddy did not move. He spoke without moving his head.
“There are two more, papa,” he said. “You have stopped too soon.”
Carroll's face contracted, but he gave the two additional blows. “Now undress yourself and go to bed,” he told the boy, in an even tone. “I will have some bread and milk sent up for your supper. To-morrow morning you will take that candy back to the store, and tell the man you stole it, and ask his pardon.”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy. He at once began unfastening his little blouse preparatory to retiring.
Carroll went out of the room and closed the door behind him. His sister met him at the head of the stairs and accosted him in a sort of fury.
“Arthur Carroll,” said she, tersely, “I wish you would tell me one thing. Did you whip that child for his faults or your own?”
Carroll looked at her. He was very pale, and his face seemed to have lengthened out and aged. “For both, Anna,” he replied.
“What right have you to punish him for your faults, I should like to know?”
“The right of the man who gave them to him.”
“You have the right to punish him for your faults—your faults?”
“I could kill him for my faults, if necessary.”
“Who is going to punish you for your faults? Tell me that, Arthur Carroll.”
“The Lord Almighty in His own good time,” replied Carroll, and passed her and went down-stairs.
Chapter X
The next morning, just before nine o'clock, Anderson was sitting in his office, reading the morning paper. The wind had changed in the night and was blowing from the northwest. The atmosphere was full of a wonderful clearness and freshness. Anderson was conscious of exhilaration. Life assumed a new aspect. New ambitions pressed upon his fancy, new joys seemed to crowd upon his straining vision in culminating vistas of the future. Without fairly admitting it to himself, it had seemed to him as if he had already in a great measure exhausted the possibilities of his own life, as if he had begun to see the bare threads of the warp, as if he had worn out the first glory of the pattern design. Now it was suddenly all different. It looked to him as if he had scarcely begun to live, as if he had not had his first taste of existence. He felt himself a youth. His senses were sharpened, and he got a keen delight from them, which stimulated his spirit like wine. He perceived for the first time a perfume from the green plants in his window-box, which seemed to grow before his eyes and give an odor like the breath of a runner. He heard whole flocks of birds in the sky outside. He distinguished quite clearly one bird-song which he had never heard before. His newspaper rustled with astonishing loudness when he turned the pages, his cigar tasted to an extreme which he had never before noticed. The leaves of the plants and the tree-boughs outside cut the air crisply. His window-shade rattled so loudly that he could not believe it was simply that. A great onslaught of the splendid wind filled the room, and everything waved and sprang as if gaining life. Then suddenly, without the slightest warning, came a shower of the confection known as molasses-peppermints through the door of the office. They are a small, hard candy, and being thrown with vicious emphasis, they rattled upon the bare floor like bullets. One even hit Anderson stingingly upon the cheek. He sprang to his feet and looked out. Nothing was to be seen except the young clerk, standing, gaping and half frightened, yet with a lurking grin. Anderson regarded him with amazement. An idea that he had gone mad flashed through his mind.
“What did you do that for, Sam?” he demanded.
“I didn't do it.”
“Who did?”
“That kid that was in here last night. That Carroll boy. He run in here and flung that candy, and out again, before I could more 'n' see him. Didn't know what were comin'.”
Anderson returned to his office, and as he crossed the threshold heard a duet of laughter from Sam and the older clerk. His feet crushed some of the candy as he resumed his seat. He took up his newspaper, but before he had fairly commenced to read he heard the imperious sound of a girl's voice outside, a quick step, and a dragging one.
“Come right along!” the girl's voice ordered.
“You lemme be!” came a sulky boy's voice in response.
“Not another word!” said the girl's. “Come right along!”
Anderson looked up. Charlotte Carroll was entering, dragging her unwilling little brother after her.
“Come,” said she again. She did not seem to regard Anderson at all. She held her brother's arm with a firm grip of her little, nervous white hand. “Now,” said she to him, “you pick up every one of those molasses-peppermint drops, every single one.”
The boy wriggled defiantly, but she held to him with wonderful strength.
“Right away,” she repeated, “every single one.”
“Let me go, then,” growled the boy, angrily. “How can I pick them up when you are holding me this way?”
The girl with a swift motion swung to the office door in the faces of the two clerks, the grinning roundness of the younger, and the half-abstracted bewilderment of the elder. Then she placed her back against it, and took her hand from her brother's arm. “Now, then, pick them up, every one,” said she.
Without another word the boy got down on his hands and knees and began gathering up the scattered sweets. Anderson had risen to his feet, and stood looking on with a dazed and helpless feeling. Now he spoke, and he realized that his voice sounded weak.
“Really, Miss Carroll,” he said, “I beg—It is of no consequence—” Then he stopped. He did not know what it was all about; he had only a faint idea of not putting any one to the trouble to pick up the débris on his office floor.
Charlotte regarded him as sternly as she had her brother. “Yes, it is of consequence. Papa told him to bring them back and apologize.”
Anderson stared at her, bewildered, while the little