The words were indifferent, but the tone was so full of significance that instinctively the boy stopped eating to listen.
'She’d been sitting up last night with Mrs. Morgan. Robbins, that boy—that poor boy—wasn’t a tramp at all. He was Charlie Morgan, trying to beat his way back home.'
'How’d they know?' Robbins asked.
'Something about the body. There was some mark. It’s dreadful for his mother. And it’s worse because she thinks—Mrs. Cartwright says a good many people think—it wasn’t an accident at all. The wound don’t look like it. And then your seeing Mr. Whiting—'
'What’d you tell her that for?' Robbins muttered.
He pushed back his chair, his hunger vanished as if from feasting.
'I didn’t. She told me. She says that man who has the truck-garden—Emerson, isn’t it?—is saying he saw Mr. Whiting on the car-roof and recognized him. But, of course, a man like that—'
Her tone disposed effectually of the second witness. She got to her feet and began to gather up the dishes from the table.
'Mrs. Cartwright says Mr. Cartwright’s looking into the thing. In his position, he’d have to. I told her you’d go up to his office.' She was passing behind Robbins’s chair as she spoke. To his amazement, she stooped and laid her cheek for an instant against his shoulder. 'Don’t you let him worry you, Robbie. You just stick to your story,' she counseled.
'I’m not going near him,' Robbins declared defiantly.