The accents of kindness touched the boy's heart. His eyes filled with tears, and, without stopping to thank the lawyer for his words of cheer, he turned about and hurried toward home, while Mr. Parker reined his horse away from the curbstone and drove on down the street.
He stopped in front of Smith & Anderson's store, and made his way into the office, where he found the senior partner seated on his high stool, busy with his books. The two men exchanged greetings, made a few remarks concerning the weather, and then Mr. Parker told the grocer why he had come there.
"I understand that you paid Oscar Preston off this morning," said he. "Now, I am somewhat interested in that boy, for it was through my influence that he obtained a place in your store, and I'd like to know what is the matter with him. What is he guilty of?"
"We haven't been able to fasten any guilt upon him," answered Mr. Smith. "We only suspect him."
"Of what?" asked the visitor.
"Now see here, Mr. Parker," exclaimed the grocer, "suppose you had a clerk working for you for twenty dollars a month, out of which he was obliged to support his mother and pay taxes on a property worth four or five thousand dollars, and that clerk should come to your office every day dressed in better clothes than you wear, and looking as though he had just come out of some lady's band-box, what would you think?"
"Oho!" cried the lawyer. "Because Oscar takes pains to keep himself as neat as a new pin, you suspect him of till-tapping, do you? I can set your fears on that score at rest. In the first place, his mother makes all his clothes, and the boy has no tailor's bills to pay. In the next place, I have known him to make more money in a single week, in a little work-shop he's got at home, than you paid him for a month's services. He is the most expert taxidermist I ever saw. I have a case of birds in my house now for which I paid him forty dollars."
"If he is making money as fast as that, why can't he keep his hands out of my drawer?" demanded the grocer.
"Do you mean to tell me that he has been stealing?" exclaimed Mr. Parker.