“Oh, there were two of you,” said Mr. Buchanan, with a pucker in his forehead.
“There were always, always two of us then,” said Elsie, with a sudden cloud on hers; “and what you said was that verse about taking your bill and writing fourscore. I did not quite understand it at the time.”
“And do you understand it now?”
“No, father, for it was a wrong thing,” said Elsie, sinking her voice. “It was cheating: and to praise a man for doing it, is what I cannot understand.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you about that; I will show you what it means,” he said, with the instinct of the expositor, “but not at this moment,” he added, “not just now. Was that all that you thought of, when you heard me say those words to myself?”
Elsie looked up at him, and then she looked all round; a sudden dramatic conflict took place in her. She had thought of that, and yet she had thought of something more than that, but she did not know what the something more was. It had haunted her, but yet she did not know what it was. She looked up and down the street, unconsciously, to find an answer and explanation, but none came. Then she said, faltering a little:—
“Yes, father, but I was not content; for I did not understand: and I am just the same now.”
“I will take an opportunity,” he said, “of explaining it all to you” and then he added, in a different tone, “it was wrong to be there when I did not know you were there, and wrong to listen to what I said to myself, thinking nobody was near; but what would be most wrong of all, would be to mention to any living creature a thing you had no right to overhear. And if you ever do it again, I will think you are a little traitor, Elsie, and no true child of mine. It would set you better to take care not to do wrong yourself, than to find fault with the parable.”
He looked at her with glowing, angry eyes, that shone through the twilight, while Elsie gazed at him with consternation. What did he mean? Then and now, what did he mean?