'Late, Robbins,' Mrs. Nelson admonished as he slid into his place. Then, catching sight of his face, 'Tired out? If it’s that accident that’s worrying you—'
'It’s not,' the boy denied. He felt his cheeks grow hot with a sudden flush of annoyance. 'I don’t see what I’d worry about that for. Only, Charlie Grotend told Mr. Whiting I saw him on the car that day, and it made Whiting mad. I was wishing he hadn’t.'
'You didn’t say anything more than that—that he could have helped it, or anything like that? Well, then!' She put the discussion aside with a gesture. 'Merle Williams telephoned to see if you’d come over there to-night. You might as well. There’s no use brooding—'
'I’m not!' Robbins flung back angrily.
His spirits lightened somewhat in the process of dressing for his outing. They lightened still more when, on his way to the place of entertainment, he came up with three or four of his mates similarly bound, and went on with them, easily the hero of the little group. Sutro, though a county seat, was a place of few excitements. The finding of the injured tramp, his death, the inquest, which had been held that day, were topics of surpassing interest, and Robbins, by virtue of his momentary contact, found his importance measurably enhanced. Before the evening was over, he had told his story a half-dozen times, each time with less repulsion, with a keener sense of its dramatic value.
'I was walking along the cut—you know, there where the train goes under you—and I saw him and yelled at the engineer to stop. I thought he was dead already—he looked like it. I don’t know what I yelled for, only I thought he’d roll off. No, I didn’t say I saw Whiting up on top,—' He adhered scrupulously to the form of his first telling,—'I saw him on those steps on the side. I’d called to him, too, if I’d seen him in time, but I didn’t.'
'I bet he’d have understood,' suggested one of the listeners.
There was something cynical, something appalling, in the fashion in which their untempered youth seized upon the idea of guilt as the concomitant of injury. Robbins, tramping home a half-hour after midnight, felt all round him the concurrence of his mates—a warm supporting wave. He was committed beyond retreat now to his theory. Almost he was self-deceived. Visualizing the scene, he could scarcely have said whether, actually, he saw Whiting’s big body flattened against the side of the car, or whether he himself had superimposed the detail.
He slept late next morning, and emerging, discovered his mother, red-eyed, moving restlessly between kitchen and dining-room. She called to him as he came out, but it was not until he was seated before his oven-dried breakfast that, with a long breath, as though she braced herself,—
'Mrs. Cartwright was here this morning,' she observed.