Price gazed reflectively and in something of a troubled fashion at Anderson, then at Carroll.  His mind was in the throes of displacing a barrel of sugar and a half-peck of pease by a little boy.  Then his face brightened.  He spoke quickly and decidedly.

“Yes,” said he, “just before this gentleman came in, a little boy, running, yes.”

“You did not see him come out while we were talking?” asked Anderson.

“No, oh no.”

Carroll asked no further and left, with a good-day to Anderson, who scarcely returned it.  He jumped into his carriage, and the swift tap of the horse’s feet died away on the macadam.

“Sugar ought to bring about two cents on a pound more,” said the clerk to Anderson, returning to the office, and then he stopped short as Anderson started staring at an enormous advertisement picture which was stationed, partly for business reasons, partly for ornament, in a corner near the office door.  It was a figure of a gayly dressed damsel, nearly life-size, and was supposed by its blooming appearance to settle finally the merit of a new health food.  The other clerk, who was a young fellow, hardly more than a boy, had placed it there.  He had reached the first fever-stage of admiration of the other sex, and this gaudy beauty had resembled in his eyes a fair damsel of Banbridge whom he secretly adored.

Therefore he had ensconced it carefully in the corner near the office door, and often glanced at it with reverent and sheepish eyes of delight.  Anderson never paid any attention to the thing, but now for some reason he glanced at it in passing, and to his astonishment it moved.  He made one stride towards it, and thrust it aside, and behind it stood the boy, with a face of impudent innocence.

Anderson stood looking at him for a second.  The boy’s eyes did not fall, but his expression changed.

“So you ran away from your father and hid from him?” Anderson observed, with a subtle emphasis of scorn.  “So you are afraid?”

The boy’s face flashed into red, his eyes blazed.

“You bet I ain’t,” he declared.

“Looks very much like it,” said Anderson, coolly.

“You let me go,” shouted the boy, and pushed rudely past Anderson and raced out of the store.  Anderson and the old clerk looked at each other across the great advertisement which had fallen face downward on the floor.

“Must have come in from the office whilst our back was turned, and slipped in behind that picture,” said the clerk, slowly.

Anderson nodded.

“He is a queer feller,” said the clerk, further.

“He certainly is,” agreed Anderson.

“As queer as ever I seen.  Guess his father ’ll give it to him when he gits home.”

“Well, he deserves it,” replied Anderson, and added, in the silence of his mind, “and his father deserves it, too,” and imagined vaguely to himself a chastening providence for the eternal good of the father even as the father might be for the eternal good of his son.  The man’s fancy was always more or less in leash to his early training.