Page:Bob Chester's Grit.djvu/45

Rh suffused by the ingratiating smirk he always put on when going to meet a prospective customer. At the sight of his ward standing in the middle of the floor, however, he started, and then his face assumed a look of forbidding severity.

"What, you here!" the grocer exclaimed, as he regained control of himself. "I thought—that is, I was told—I mean, I heard that you had been arrested, and I didn't expect to see you again for some time; that is—I mean not here in the store. If you had been sent to prison I should, of course, have gone to see you."

Never before had Bob seen his guardian so ill at ease, and from his knowledge of the man, he decided that his entrance must have interrupted him when he was engaged at some unusual task. But how to meet the situation, Bob did not know, and he was vainly striving to think of the right thing to say when their relations were brought back to their normal plane by his guardian snarling:

"What did you do with my delivery basket? Did you leave it with the groceries, or didn't you even deliver them?"

The subtle cruelty of this remark stung Bob to the quick. It was the straw that broke his endurance of the long term of abuse and harsh words to which he had been subjected.

"No, I didn't deliver the groceries," he flashed