pay cash with five-dollar bills."

"Sure it was a good one?" said one of the other men.

"I thought all Carroll's family had went," said the third man.

"Guess they didn't have enough money to take this one, and you can't
beat the Pennsylvania Railroad nohow," said the fishman.

Charlotte went on to the butcher's, bought and paid for some ham,
then to Anderson's for eggs. The old clerk came forward as she
entered, and answered her question about the eggs.

"Do you want them charged?" he asked.

"No, I will pay for them," replied Charlotte, and took her little
purse, and just then Anderson, having heard her voice, looked
incredulously out of his office, his morning paper in hand. Charlotte
laid some money on the counter, and stepped forward at once. She saw
with a sort of wonder, and an agitation within herself for which she
could not account, that the man was deadly white, that he fairly
trembled.

"Good-morning, Mr. Anderson," she said.

Anderson was a man of self-control, but he gazed down at her fairly
speechless. He had been telling himself that she had gone as
certainly out of his life as if she were dead, and here she was again.

"I thought," he stammered, finally.

Charlotte's face of innocent wonder and disturbance flushed. "No, I
did not go, after all," she said, like a child. "That is, I started,
but I went no farther than Lancaster. They thought I was going--they
all did--but I could not leave papa alone, and so I came back." She
was incoherent. Her own confusion deepened. She tried to look into
the man's face, but her own eyes fell; her lips quivered. She was
almost crying, but she did not know why. She turned to the counter,
behind which stood the man with the package of eggs and the change.

"Send that package," Anderson said, brusquely.

"The wagon has gone."

"Send it as soon as it comes back. There will be time enough."

"I can manage if I don't have the eggs until noon," said Charlotte.

The clerk turned to put away the parcel in readiness for the
delivery-wagon, and again Anderson and the girl looked at each other.
Anderson had caught up his hat with his newspaper as he came out of
the office, and Charlotte looked at it.

"Were you going out?" she asked, timidly, and yet the question seemed
to imply a suggestion. She glanced towards the door.

Anderson muttered something about an errand, and went out with her.
They walked along the street together. Suddenly Charlotte looked up
in