School was out. Roxy had reached home. She was setting the table, and whistling like a blackbird. Things had gone so happily at school! Everything was so neat, and pleasant, and cosy at home! She saw her father ride into the yard, and go to the barn. She whistled on.
She sat in the big rocking-chair, stoning cherries, and smelling the roses by the window, when he came into the kitchen.
“Where’s Roxy?” she heard him ask.
“In the other room, I guess,” said mother.
He came in where she was. She looked up; and her little stained hands fell back into the pan. She knew the day of judgment had come. O, she wished it was that other day, the day of death, instead! Her mouth dropped open, the room turned dark.
Mr. Gildersleeve sank down on a chair. His child’s face was too much for him. He groaned aloud. “That one of my children should ever be 062talked about as a thief! What possessed you, Roxy?”
Roxy sat before him, trembling. Not at the prospect of punishment. But she saw her father’s eyes filling up with tears. “Don’t, father,” she said, hurriedly, trying not to cry. “I’ve only eaten a little, and I will carry it all back. If you will pay for what is gone, I’ll sell berries or something, and pay you back the money. Mr. Hampshire is a good man; he won’t tell, father, if you ask him not.”
“You poor, ignorant child!”
He got up and went out, shutting the door after him. Not one word of punishment; but he left Roxy trembling with a strange terror. She shook with a presentiment of some unendurable public disgrace. Setting down the pan of cherries, she crept to the door. She heard her father’s voice, her mother’s sharp exclamations. Then her father said, “To think our girl should sin in such a high-handed way! Mother, I’d rather laid her in her grave any day! That hot-headed Markham will not rest until he’s published it from Dan to Beersheba. She’s only a child, but this thing will stick to her as long as she lives.”
Her mother sobbed. “Our poor Roxy! Tom, if the school children get hold of it, she will never go another day. The child is so sensitive! I don’t know 063how to punish her as I ought. I can only think how to save her from what is before her.”