"I don't want to be—to be bamboozled."
"Of course you don't. But how could I bamboozle you?"
There was no explanation. Unable to base his distrust on any other ground than that Bob was the son of the man who had dismissed Josiah Follett from the bank, Teddy fell silent again. He could not afford to reject the least good will that came his way, and yet his spirit was too sore to accept it graciously.
Some of this young Collingham divined. He began to see that as the boy was suffering and he wasn't, it was not for him to take offense. On the contrary, he must use all his ingenuity to find the way to make his appeal effectively.
"All I could do from down there," he said, when Teddy seemed indisposed to speak again, "was to get Stenhouse or some one to take up your case. I mean to see him in the morning and find out how far he's got along with it. But now that I'm here, can't you think of something of your own that you'd like me to do?"
Teddy raised his eyes quickly. His look was the dull look of anguish, and yet with sharpness in the glance.
"What kind of thing?"
"Any kind. Think of the thing that's most on your mind—the thing that worries you more than anything else—and—put it up to me." The somberness deepened in the lad's face, not from resentment, but from heaviness of thought. "Go ahead," Bob urged. "Cough it up. If it's something I can't tackle, I'll tell you so."
"What's most on my mind," Teddy began, slowly, gritting his teeth with the effort to get the words out, "what worries me like hell—is ma—and the girls. They—they must be lonesome—something fierce—without me."
In his agony of controlling himself he was rubbing his palms between his knees, but Bob put out his great hand and seized him by the wrist.