“Were you going out?” she asked, timidly, and yet the question seemed to imply a suggestion.  She glanced towards the door.

Anderson muttered something about an errand, and went out with her.  They walked along the street together.  Suddenly Charlotte looked up in his face and began confiding in him.  She told the whole story.

“You see, I couldn’t leave papa,” she concluded.

Anderson looked down at her, and the look was unmistakable.  Charlotte blushed and her face quivered.

“Then you are going to stay here all winter?” he said, in a low voice.

“Oh, no, I think not,” she replied.  “I think we shall go away.”

Anderson’s face fell.  She had spoken very eagerly, almost as if she were anxious to go.

She made it worse.  “I don’t think I should have come back if it had not been for that,” she said.  “I did not see what poor papa could do all alone, trying to move.  I don’t think I should.”

“Yes,” said Anderson, soberly.

“Perhaps I should not have,” said she.  She did not look at him.  She kept her eyes fixed on the frozen ground, but the man’s face lighted.

They kept on in a vague sort of fashion and had reached the post-office.  They entered, and when Anderson had unlocked his box and taken out his mail, and Charlotte had gotten some letters which looked like bills for her father, he realized the he had no excuse to go any farther with her.  He bade her good-morning, therefore.  Charlotte said good-morning, and there was a little uncertainty and wistfulness in her look and voice.  She was very unsophisticated, and she was wondering whether she should ask him to call, now her mother and aunt had gone.  She resolved that she would ask her father.  As for Anderson, he went back to the store in a sort of dream.  He suddenly began to wonder if the impossible could be possible.  At one moment he ridiculed himself for the absurdity of such an imagination, even, and then the imagination returned.  He reflected that he would have had no such doubt if it had not been for his lack of success in his profession.  He charged himself with a lack of self-respect that he should have doubts now.

“After all, I am a man,” he told himself.  “I am as good as ever I was.”

Then he considered, and rightly, that it was not his own just estimate of himself which was to be taken into consideration in a case of this sort, but that of the people.  He realized that a girl brought up as Charlotte Carroll had been might, knowing, as she must finally know, her own father to be little better than a common swindler, not even dream of the possibility of marrying a grocer.  He had to pass his old office on his way home to dinner that noon, and he looked at it with more regret than he had ever done since leaving it.  The school was out and the children were streaming along the street.  The air was full of their chatter.  Henry Edgecomb came up behind him with a good-morning.  He looked worn and nervous.  Anderson looked at him sharply after his greeting.