“Yes, that’s a fact,” he was told, moodily. “I never knew a fellow more eager to scrape cents and dollars together. He would do any kind of extra work after hours if only he could make ten cents by it.”
“But you wouldn’t call him a money-lover, or a miser, would you?” queried Rob.
“That was what I thought at first, and I didn’t like it one bit,” Ralph explained, frankly. “So I mentioned the matter to Peleg one time. He told me that he was the oldest of the children left by his father when he died. One sister just younger than Peleg works for a family not a great many miles away from here. The others, three of them, are in an orphan asylum, you know. Well, would you believe it, Peleg told me he had an ambition to get enough money together, somehow, to sooner or later have an humble home, where all the Pinder children might live together!”
Rob caught his breath.
“That was a noble resolution for Peleg, wasn’t it?” he exclaimed.
“I believed so,” replied Ralph, disconsolately. “It made me think a heap of the boy, and I tried every way I could to encourage him. That’s what makes it cut me so hard now, to suspect that he could steal from me.”
Somehow, what he had heard seemed to encourage Rob more than ever in his belief that Peleg must be innocent. The circumstances all seemed to point strongly toward his being guilty; but Rob plucked up fresh hope after learning what a splendid excuse the boy had given for scrimping, and saving every cent he could gather together.
In imagination Rob could even see the happy faces of the little Pinders when they eventually found themselves under a roof of their own, if such happiness was indeed ever going to come their way. Brave, loyal, brotherly Peleg, how few boys would have dreamed such dreams as came to him at night, and visions by day?
“Oh! it doesn’t seem possible that he could be guilty of doing such a mean thing as taking your stamps, Ralph,” he told the other.
Somehow, even the confidence Rob had in the boy who was under suspicion seemed to make Ralph Jeffords feel better.