The Debtor: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“At four o'clock,” replied the boy, with such unsuspicion that the man's conscience smote him. It was too easy.

“Well,” said Anderson, slowly. He did not look at the boy, but went on straightening the mangled wing of the butterfly which he had offered on his shrine. “Well,” he said, “how did you get time to go to that field and catch this butterfly? You say it took a long time, and that field is a good twenty minutes' run from here, and it is a quarter of five now.” The boy kicked his feet against the rounds of his chair and made no reply. His forehead was scowling, his mouth set. “How?” repeated Anderson.

Then the boy turned on the man. He slid out of his chair; he spoke loudly. He forgot to glance at the door. “Ain't you smart?” he cried, with scorn, and still with an air of slighted affection which appealed. “Ain't you smart to catch a feller that way? You're mean, if you are a man, after I've got you that big butterfly, too, to turn on a feller that way.”

Anderson actually felt ashamed of himself. “Now, see here, my boy,” he said, “I'm grateful to you so far as that goes.”

“I didn't run away from school,” declared Eddy Carroll, looking straight at Anderson, who fairly gasped.

He had seen people lie before, but somehow this was actually dazzling. He was conscious of fairly blinking before the direct gaze of innocence of this lying little boy. And then his elderly and reliable clerk appeared in the office door, glanced at Eddy, whom he did not know, and informed Anderson, in a slightly impressed tone, that Captain Carroll was in the store and would like to speak to him. Anderson glanced again at his young visitor, who had got, in a second, a look of pale consternation. He went out into the store at once, and was greeted by Carroll with the inquiry as to whether or not he had seen his son.

“My boy has not been seen since he started for school this morning,” said Carroll. “I came here because another little boy, one of my son's small school-fellows, who has succeeded in treading the paths of virtue and obedience, volunteered the information, without the slightest imputation of any guilty conspiracy on your part, that you had been seen leading my son home to your residence to dinner,” said Carroll.

“Your son made friends with me on his way from school this noon,” said Anderson, simply, “and upon his evident desire to dine with me I invited him, being assured by him that his so doing would not occasion the slightest uneasiness at home as to his whereabouts.”

Anderson was indignant at something in the other man's tone, and was careful not to introduce in his tone the slightest inflection of apology.

He made the statement, and was about to add that the boy was at that moment in his office, when Carroll interrupted. “I regret to say that my son has not the slightest idea of what is meant by telling the truth. He never had,” he stated, smilingly, “especially when his own desires lead him to falsehood. In those cases he lies to himself so successfully that he tells in effect the truth to other people. He, in that sense, told the truth to you, but the truth was not as he stated, for the ladies have been in a really pitiable state of anxiety.”