I dropped upon a chair and could not speak for trembling.
“There’s some reason why he won’t deny them!” said Estelle in a shrill, excited voice, that one would hardly have recognized as hers.
“He was always that way. He always owned up. Some small boys would have said they didn’t mean the old woman with the broom for Miss Raycroft,” I said, sharply referring to the earlier trouble at school.
“You don’t mean that you believe he did those dreadful things?” cried Estelle, springing to her feet.
“He—he was always so easily led,” I stammered. “He would never mean to do wrong, but—but so few people do mean to do wrong!”
I felt that my conclusion was both lame and irritating; but had we not always felt and known that Dave had not a strong character, that what he would become must depend largely upon the influences that surrounded him? Who should know this better, I thought, than the little sister who had kept him—generally in a salutary way—under her thumb?
“He’s a dear boy,” I added feebly, while Estelle’s indignation held her speechless, “but too easily led.”
“If you believe those things of Dave you are no sister of mine!” cried Estelle. She drew herself up to her full height and hurled her words at me as if they were so many javelins.
I felt unaccountably abashed before her, considering that she was my younger half-sister, over whom I had exercised a motherly care and always snubbed in an elderly fashion when I thought proper. And yet I was not so subdued as to be willing to part with my reason and common sense for the sake of retaining Estelle’s sisterly regard. So I felt it to be the wisest course to retreat as speedily as possible from her room.
But it was such a wretched and angry young face upon which I closed the door that I could not refrain from opening it again to say: