Mr. Markham!"

"I say, what you sending your young uns down to the store after things,
and charging them to me for? Mighty creditable that, Tom Gildersleeve!"

"Getting things and charging them to you!" Gildersleeve stopped his
horse. "What do you mean, Markham?"

"You better go down and ask Hampshire. If you don't, you may get it
explained in a way you won't fancy!"

He whipped up his horses and drove off, leaving Mr. Gildersleeve
standing there, gazing after him as if he had lost his senses. After a
moment he unhitched his horse from the cultivator, mounted him, and rode
off toward the village.

School was out. Roxy had reached home. She was setting the table, and
whistling like a blackbird. Things had gone so happily at school!
Everything was so neat, and pleasant, and cosy at home! She saw her
father ride into the yard, and go to the barn. She whistled on.

She sat in the big rocking-chair, stoning cherries, and smelling the
roses by the window, when he came into the kitchen.

"Where's Roxy?" she heard him ask.

"In the other room, I guess," said mother.

He came in where she was. She looked up; and her little stained hands
fell back into the pan. She knew the day of judgment had come. O, she
wished it was that other day, the day of death, instead! Her mouth
dropped open, the room turned dark.

Mr. Gildersleeve sank down on a chair. His child's face was too much for
him. He groaned aloud. "That one of _my_ children should ever be talked
about as a thief! What possessed you, Roxy?"

Roxy sat before him, trembling. Not at the prospect of punishment. But
she saw her father's eyes filling up with tears. "Don't, father," she
said, hurriedly, trying not to cry. "I've only eaten a little, and I
will carry it all back. If you will pay for what is gone, I'll sell
berries or something, and pay you back the money. Mr. Hampshire is a
good man; he won't tell, father, if you ask him not."

"You poor, ignorant child!"

He got up and went out, shutting the door after him. Not one word of
punishment; but he left Roxy trembling with a strange terror. She shook
with a presentiment of some unendurable public disgrace. Setting down
the pan of cherries, she crept to the door. She heard her father's
voice, her mother's sharp exclamations. Then her father said, "To think
_our_ girl should sin in such a high-handed way! Mother, I'd rather laid
her in her grave any day! That hot-headed Markham will not rest until
he's publis