hat he must bring them back this morning and ask
your pardon," said Charlotte, "and when he came running out of the
store I suspected what he had done; and when I found out, I made him
come back. Pick up every one, Eddy."

"Here is one he stepped on his own self and smashed all to nothing,"
said Eddy, in an aggrieved tone. "I can't pick that up, anyhow."

"Pick up what you can of it, and put it in the paper bag."

"I shouldn't think he could sell this to anybody without cheating
them," remarked Eddy, in a lofty tone, in spite of his abject
position.

"Never you mind what he does with it. You pick up every single
speck," ordered the girl; and the boy scraped the floor with his
sharp finger-nails, and crammed the candy and dust into a small paper
bag. The girl stood watchfully over him; not the smallest particle
escaped her eyes. "There's some more over there," said she, sharply,
when the boy was about to rise; and Eddy loped like some small animal
on all-fours towards a tiny heap of crushed peppermint-drops.

"He must have stepped on this, too," he muttered, with a reproachful
glare at Anderson, who had never in his life felt so at a loss. He
was divided between consternation and an almost paralyzing sense of
the ridiculous. He was conscious that a laugh would be regarded as an
insult by this very angry and earnest young girl. But at last Eddy
tendered him the bag with the rescued peppermint-drops.

"I shouldn't think you would ask more than half-price for candy like
this, anyway," said Eddy, admonishingly, and that was too much for
the man. He shouted with laughter; not even Charlotte's face, which
suddenly flushed with wrath, could sober him. She looked at him a
moment while he laughed, and her face of severe judgment and anger
intensified.

"Very well," said she, "if you see anything funny about this, I am
glad, Mr. Anderson."

But the boy, who had viewed with doubt and suspicion this abrupt
change of aspect on the part of the man, suddenly grinned in
response; his black eyes twinkled charmingly with delight and fun.
"Say, _you're_ all right," he said to Anderson, with a confidential
nod.

"Eddy!" cried Charlotte.

"Now, Charlotte, you don't see how funny it is, because you are a
girl," said Eddy, soothingly, and he continued to grin at the man,
half-elfishly, half-innocently. He looked very small and young.

The girl caught hold of his arm. "Come away immediately," she said,
in a choking voice. "Immedi