"I wonder what he was doing. He hates Seabrooke; so he wasn't giving him a pleasant surprise," said the little boy to himself. "He's a sneak, and I suspect he was doing something sneaky. I've a great mind to tell Seabrooke to look in his trunk before he locks it. Perhaps he has put in something to explode or do some harm to the things in Seabrook's trunk or to himself."
Charlie was a nervous child and rather imaginative, and was always conjuring up possibilities of disaster in his own mind. He did not make these public; he knew better than to do such a thing in a house full of schoolboys, but they existed all the same. He did not wish to "tell tales;" but he had not too much confidence in Lewis Flagg—it would be hard to find the boy in the school who had, especially among the younger ones—and he could not bear to think that he might have planned some scurvy trick on Seabrooke.
Charlie was a pattern scholar, a boy after Seabrooke's own heart, because of his sincere efforts to do right; and hence he had found favor in his eyes, and he had shown many little tokens of partiality toward the child which had won for him the younger boy's gratitude and affection.
He lay waiting for Mrs. Moffat and trying to make up his mind what he had better do, when Seabrooke himself entered the room and went directly to his alcove, in his turn unconscious of Charlie's presence.
He looked troubled and harassed, as he well might do, and sat down for a moment, leaning his head upon his hand, and seemingly in deep thought.
Should he tell him? Charlie asked himself.
Presently with a sigh and a despondent shake of the head, to which he would never have given vent had he known that any one was observing him, Seabrooke rose, and going to his trunk proceeded to lock it.
It was too much for Charlie.
"Seabrooke!" he said, in a low tone, and raising himself from his pillows.
Seabrooke looked up, startled at finding that he was not the sole occupant of the room.