"So you ran away from your father and hid from him?" Anderson
observed, with a subtle emphasis of scorn. "So you are afraid?"

The boy's face flashed into red, his eyes blazed.

"You bet I ain't," he declared.

"Looks very much like it," said Anderson, coolly.

"You let me go," shouted the boy, and pushed rudely past Anderson and
raced out of the store. Anderson and the old clerk looked at each
other across the great advertisement which had fallen face downward
on the floor.

"Must have come in from the office whilst our back was turned, and
slipped in behind that picture," said the clerk, slowly.

Anderson nodded.

"He is a queer feller," said the clerk, further.

"He certainly is," agreed Anderson.

"As queer as ever I seen. Guess his father 'll give it to him when he
gits home."

"Well, he deserves it," replied Anderson, and added, in the silence
of his mind, "and his father deserves it, too," and imagined vaguely
to himself a chastening providence for the eternal good of the father
even as the father might be for the eternal good of his son. The
man's fancy was always more or less in leash to his early training.

Just then the younger clerk, Sam Riggs, commonly called Sammy,
entered, and espying at once with jealous eyes the fallen state of
his idol in the corner, took the first opportunity to pick her up and
straighten her to her former position.

Chapter IX

Little Eddy Carroll, running on his slim legs like a hound, raced
down the homeward road, and came in sight of his father's carriage
just before it turned the corner. Carroll had stopped once on the
way, and so the boy overtook him. When Carroll stopped to make an
inquiry, he caught a glimpse of the small, flying figure in the rear;
in fact, the man to whom he spoke pointed this out.

"Why, there's your boy, now, Cap'n Carroll," he said, "runnin' as
fast after you as you be after him." The man was an old fellow of a
facetious turn of mind who had done some work on Carroll's garden.

Carroll, after that one rapid, comprehensive glance, said not another
word. He nodded curtly and sprang into the carriage; but the old man,
pressing close to the wheel, so that it could not move without
throwing him, said something in a half-whisper, as if he were ashamed
of it.

"Certainly, certainly, very soon," replied Carroll, with some
impatience.

"I need it pooty bad," the old man said, abashedly.

"Very soon, I tell you," repeated Carroll.