that candy,
I wouldn't have been obliged to take any. I said--"

"I heard what you said. Now you must come at once."

Anderson said good-morning rather feebly. Charlotte made a distant
inclination of her head in response, and they were gone, but he heard
Eddy cry out, in a tone of reproachful glee:

"There! you've made me late at school, Charlotte. Look at that clock;
it's after nine. You've made me late at school with all that fussing
over a few old peppermint-drops."

Chapter XI

Anderson, after they were gone, sat staring out of the window at the
green spray of the spring boughs. His mouth was twitching, but his
forehead was contracted. This problem of feminity and childhood which
he had confronted was too much for him. The boy did not perplex him
quite so much--he did not think so much about him--but the girl, the
pure and sweet unreason of her proceedings, was beyond his mental
grasp. The attitude of reproach which this delicate and altogether
lovely young blossom of a thing had adopted towards him filled him
with dismay and a ludicrous sense of guilt. He had a keen sense of
the unreason and contrariness of her whole attitude, but he had no
contempt towards her on account of it. He felt as if he were facing
some new system of things, some higher order of creature for whom
unreason was the finest reason. He bowed before the pure, unordered,
untempered feminine, and his masculine mind reeled. And all the time,
deeper within himself than he had ever reached with the furthest
finger of his emotions, whether for pain or joy, he felt this
tenderness, which was like the quickening of another soul, so alive
was it. He felt the wonder and mystery of the awakening of love in
his heart, this reaching out with all the best of him for the
protection and happiness of another than himself. He saw before him,
with no dimming because of absence, the girl's little, innocent, fair
face, and such a tenderness for her was over him that he felt as if
he actually clasped her and enfolded her, but only for her protection
and good, never for himself.

"The little thing," he thought over and over--"the little, innocent,
beautiful thing! What kind of a place is she in, among what kind of
people? What does this all mean?"

Suspicions which had been in his mind all the time had developed. He
had had proof in divers ways. He said to himself, "That man is a
scoundrel, a common swindler, if I know one when I see him." But
suspicio