“Here is one he stepped on his own self and smashed all to nothing,” said Eddy, in an aggrieved tone. “I can't pick that up, anyhow.”
“Pick up what you can of it, and put it in the paper bag.”
“I shouldn't think he could sell this to anybody without cheating them,” remarked Eddy, in a lofty tone, in spite of his abject position.
“Never you mind what he does with it. You pick up every single speck,” ordered the girl; and the boy scraped the floor with his sharp finger-nails, and crammed the candy and dust into a small paper bag. The girl stood watchfully over him; not the smallest particle escaped her eyes. “There's some more over there,” said she, sharply, when the boy was about to rise; and Eddy loped like some small animal on all-fours towards a tiny heap of crushed peppermint-drops.
“He must have stepped on this, too,” he muttered, with a reproachful glare at Anderson, who had never in his life felt so at a loss. He was divided between consternation and an almost paralyzing sense of the ridiculous. He was conscious that a laugh would be regarded as an insult by this very angry and earnest young girl. But at last Eddy tendered him the bag with the rescued peppermint-drops.
“I shouldn't think you would ask more than half-price for candy like this, anyway,” said Eddy, admonishingly, and that was too much for the man. He shouted with laughter; not even Charlotte's face, which suddenly flushed with wrath, could sober him. She looked at him a moment while he laughed, and her face of severe judgment and anger intensified.
“Very well,” said she, “if you see anything funny about this, I am glad, Mr. Anderson.”
But the boy, who had viewed with doubt and suspicion this abrupt change of aspect on the part of the man, suddenly grinned in response; his black eyes twinkled charmingly with delight and fun. “Say, you're all right,” he said to Anderson, with a confidential nod.
“Eddy!” cried Charlotte.
“Now, Charlotte, you don't see how funny it is, because you are a girl,” said Eddy, soothingly, and he continued to grin at the man, half-elfishly, half-innocently. He looked very small and young.