“It wasn’t him, I hope, Kate,” with a catch in his breath that made Mrs. Hallock tell him to “lie down and keep still.”
“Yes it was, that very boy.”
“Mother,” spoke up Frank, “that poor fellow hasn’t a friend left in the world. Everybody belonging to him was burned up in the big fire in Michigan, you know. The circus, this circus, was going about through the state, and this boy was trying to get somewhere where he could live, when he found it, and has been going about with it ever since.”
“How do you know, Frank?”
Frank had counted the cost before he had spoken. He knew just what it involved to tell the whole truth, but he came out with it bravely, telling the story of the morning spent on the circus grounds, and what he had there learned from Harry Cornwall about himself. “Mother,” he said at the end of his statement, “they take up their tents and go away in the night. Won’t you please send Richard to find out if he is much hurt?”
“It’s just good and sweet and beautiful and everything in you, dear Frank,” said Kate, the instant her mother had gone to send Richard according to the boy’s request, adding, “I’ll forgive you everything naughty you may do all summer, for this, and I’ll love you always, dearly, Frank!”
“Of course you will, Kate. You couldn’t help it, if you tried!”
“Frank, you’ll have to give up the corn now,” said Kate.
“I know it. What of it?”
“Aren’t you awful sorry?”