“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” sobbed the child. “I wiss I had minded mamma. I is so sowwy I didn’t mind mamma.”
“No, ’ittle sister,” came in Persis’s earnest voice, listened to by the mother at a window above, “’oo isn’t sowwy ’cause ’oo didn’t mind mamma, ’oo is only sowwy ’cause ’oo bwoke Gewaldine.” And so it was with poor little Mellicent this time: she was grieving because of the prospect of censure.
Persis, after her reproof, felt so sorry for her sister that she began to comfort her by saying it might be made all right if she would tell her mother the whole story; and leaving her in penitent tears she sought Basil, whom she heard softly twanging his guitar. In response to her knock he appeared at the door of his room.
“Come down in the library, Basil,” said Persis. “I have something to tell you.”
“What’s up?” he asked as he followed her down-stairs.
“Why, I think I can tell you something about Porter. I hate to be a tell-tale, but I am pretty sure he borrowed some money from Mellicent. She had nine or ten dollars after Christmas, and now she only has a few cents. You know they both looked sort of confused, the other day, when you said wrong was wrong whether any one knew it or not.”
“Yes, I noticed that. My goodness, Persis, I hope Porter hasn’t done a mean thing like that. Of all contemptible things, to borrow from a girl! My father used to say that when a man was willing to borrow money from a woman it was pretty good evidence of where he stood with men, and the very fact of his taking advantage of a woman’s soft-heartedness made him the more censurable; that if men couldn’t trust him, women ought not to.” And Basil looked much perturbed.
“Oh, don’t think that way,” returned Persis, comfortingly. “He is only a little boy, and very likely it was only thoughtlessness.”
“I’ve got to find out about it,” responded Basil. “Don’t say anything more about it till you hear further; not that I would have you keep anything from your mother, but don’t tell any one else. It will be best to get at the root of the matter, and then Porter must make a clean breast of it.”
But the very next day something occurred to throw light on the affair, and to show Mellicent’s part in it as well as Porter’s. An acquaintance calling upon Mrs. Holmes said, sweetly, “I saw your little girl at the theatre not long ago,—the youngest one I think, with the golden hair. What a pretty child she is! And I suppose the nice-looking lad with her was one of the Phillips boys.”