his face and began confiding in him. She told the whole story.

"You see, I couldn't leave papa," she concluded.

Anderson looked down at her, and the look was unmistakable. Charlotte
blushed and her face quivered.

"Then you are going to stay here all winter?" he said, in a low voice.

"Oh, no, I think not," she replied. "I think we shall go away."

Anderson's face fell. She had spoken very eagerly, almost as if she
were anxious to go.

She made it worse. "I don't think I should have come back if it had
not been for that," she said. "I did not see what poor papa could do
all alone, trying to move. I don't think I should."

"Yes," said Anderson, soberly.

"Perhaps I should not have," said she. She did not look at him. She
kept her eyes fixed on the frozen ground, but the man's face lighted.

They kept on in a vague sort of fashion and had reached the
post-office. They entered, and when Anderson had unlocked his box and
taken out his mail, and Charlotte had gotten some letters which
looked like bills for her father, he realized the he had no excuse to
go any farther with her. He bade her good-morning, therefore.
Charlotte said good-morning, and there was a little uncertainty and
wistfulness in her look and voice. She was very unsophisticated, and
she was wondering whether she should ask him to call, now her mother
and aunt had gone. She resolved that she would ask her father. As for
Anderson, he went back to the store in a sort of dream. He suddenly
began to wonder if the impossible could be possible. At one moment he
ridiculed himself for the absurdity of such an imagination, even, and
then the imagination returned. He reflected that he would have had no
such doubt if it had not been for his lack of success in his
profession. He charged himself with a lack of self-respect that he
should have doubts now.

"After all, I am a man," he told himself. "I am as good as ever I
was."

Then he considered, and rightly, that it was not his own just
estimate of himself which was to be taken into consideration in a
case of this sort, but that of the people. He realized that a girl
brought up as Charlotte Carroll had been might, knowing, as she must
finally know, her own father to be little better than a common
swindler, not even dream of the possibility of marrying a grocer. He
had to pass his old office on his way home to dinner that noon, and
he looked at it with more regret than he had ever done since leaving
it. The