"It's all right. Do let me go, Missis Barry!" cried he, vexed and beginning to feel decidedly frightened.
"Hi, Tom, come on!" called Ed Brown, emerging from the area.
"Look here, Masther Tom, darlin'! You'll not move a step with them things, an' I'll not put up that money till I know where it came from."
"Well, then," said Tom, doggedly, seeing that escape was impossible, "I got it at home, off the mantel in the sitting-room."
"Oh, yes!" ejaculated Mrs. Barry, raising her eyes toward heaven, as if praying for the pardon of the offence.
"Why, that's nothing!" he went on. "Ed Brown says lots of boys do it. Some take the change out of their father's pockets even, if they get a chance. His father don't mind a bit. He always has plenty of cash, Ed has."
"Ah, yes, that ne'er-do-well, Ed Brown!" said the old woman, shaking her fist at the distant Ed, who, realizing that Tom had got into trouble, disappeared in a twinkling.
"An' his father don't mind! Then it's because he knows nothin' about it. They'll come a day of reckonin' for him. An' you—"
"Oh, the folks at home won't care!" persisted Tom, thoroughly ashamed, but still anxious to excuse himself. "Mother always says that everything in the house is for the use of the family. If we children should make a raid on the pantry, and carry off a pie or cake, she might punish us for the disobedience, but she wouldn't call it stealing." He blushed as he uttered the ugly word.
"Yes, but to take money is different, ye know," continued his relentless mentor, whose heart, however, was sorrowing over him with the tenderness of a mother for her child.