Walter and the Wireless

by Sara Ware Bassett

He had by this time reached the house and like a criminal who faces execution and mounts the scaffold steps he climbed the broad flight leading to the front door. Mr. Crowninshield was on the veranda, sitting quietly in a big wicker chair, looking out toward the sea. He was thinking so intently on some imagining of his own that he did not hear the lad's footfall and Walter was obliged to address him twice before he answered. Then he started suddenly, as if annoyed at being disturbed.

"Well?" interrogated he.

The fine introduction that His Highness had planned to utter, together with everything else he had arranged to say, fled from his memory and he stood speechless before his employer.

"You wish to see me?" Mr. Crowninshield repeated in a less sharp tone.

"I—yes, sir."

Nevertheless, despite the heavy pause the words the boy sought would not come. Instead a plaintive jumble of phrases tumbled incoherently forth, astounding the lad himself almost as much as they did the person to whom they were addressed:

"Oh, sir, I've lost your dog, Lola! I didn't mean to and I didn't really lose her. She was gone when I got back from my walk with Achilles and the others. I left her locked in all right—I know I did. Where she is or how she got out I've no idea. I'm terribly sorry. I can't possibly pay for her, and you'll just have to put me in prison. It's the only way, I guess. Don't blame my mother or Bob, please, or Jerry either, because I've turned out to be such a duffer. It isn't their fault. And perhaps I better go straight home. I suppose you won't want me round here any more."

A great gasp strangled any further utterance and only the lad's sobbing breath broke the stillness.

Nerved to receive a scourge of maledictions or a blow the culprit waited. But nothing came—neither vindictives nor chastisement. He ventured to raise his head and confront his judge.

Mr. Crowninshield was sitting looking far out to sea exactly as before and Walter actually began to wonder whether he had been turned to stone or had been stricken with deafness.