“No; you can't. You'll be watched every minute. Boys never do break out of jail, Lem. They just stay there and are so miserable. So what I want to do is to help you now. So you need n't be sent away at all.”
“If she won't send me I'm goin'away, anyway,” Lem declared. “I won't stay in any old house with such an old hyena pickin' on me all the time.”
“Miss Susan doesn't understand you, Lem, and you don't understand her. But that does n't matter now. If you go away you must not go with the name of a thief fastened on you—” The door opened and Freeman Todder came into the room.
“Look here,” he said angrily, “I want my pants. I won't stand any nonsense. You give them to me.”
“You're insane!” said Henrietta. “I know nothing about them.”
“Oh! that's it, is it?” he said. “All right!”
He began searching the room.
“Well, I ain't a thief, an' I don't care who says I am,” Lem was saying. “I did n't take her old money. She took mine, an' she's an old thief, an' I'll tell her so to her face. An' I'll make her give it back to me. I 'll set the police on her.”
“Listen, Lem, won't you please try to help me? Won't you tell me where you got that money?”
“No, I won't!” the boy declared stubbornly. “But I 'll tell her who stole her money. I 'll tell her he stole it, an' when she searches him she'll find it.”