“A MOB OF SMALL BOYS HAD FOUND AN OBJECT UPON WHICH TO VENT THEIR WILDEST MISCHIEF.”“A MOB OF SMALL BOYS HAD FOUND AN OBJECT UPONWHICH TO VENT THEIR WILDEST MISCHIEF.”
It was all done so quickly that even the girl herself could not have told how it happened. Almost unconsciously she slipped over into the vacant seat and gave her place to the fearless, square-jawed man who seemingly had risen from the ground. An apparently impossible number of long arms shot out to the right and to the left, and the squirming urchins dropped to the ground, sprawling on all fours, and howling with surprise and chagrin. Then came a warning cry and a sharp “honk-honk-honk” from the horn. The next moment the car bounded forward on a roadway that opened clear and straight before it.
Not until he had left the town quite behind him did McGinnis bring the car to a halt in the shade of a great tree by the roadside. Then he turned an anxious face to the girl at his side.
“You’re not hurt, I hope, Miss Kendall,” he began. “I didn’t like to stop before to ask. I hope you didn’t mind being thrust so unceremoniously out of your place and run away with,” he finished, a faint twinkle coming into his gray eyes.
Margaret flushed. Before she spoke she put both hands to her head and straightened her hat.
“No, I—I’m not hurt,” she said faintly; “but Iwasfrightened. You—you were very good to run away with me,” she added, the red deepening inher cheeks. “I’m sure I don’t know what I should have done if you hadn’t.”
The man’s face darkened.
“The little rascals!” he cried. “They deserve a sound thrashing—every one of them.”
“But I’d done nothing—I’d not spoken to them,” she protested. “I don’t see why they should have molested me.”
“Pure mischief, to begin with, probably,” returned the man; “then they saw that you were frightened, and that set them wild with delight. All is—I’m glad I was there,” he concluded, with grim finality.
Margaret turned quickly.
“And so am I,” she said, “and yet I don’t even know whom to thank, though you evidently know me. You seemed to come from the ground, and you handled the car as if it were your own.”
With a sudden exclamation the man stepped to the ground; then he turned and faced her, hat in hand.
“And I’m acting now as if it were my own, too,” he said, almost bitterly. “I beg your pardon, Miss Kendall. I have run it many times for Mr. Spencer; that explains my familiarity with it.”
“And you are——” she paused expectantly.
The man hesitated. It was almost on his tongue’s end to say, “One of the mill-hands”; then something in the bright face, the pleasant smile, the half-outstretched hand, sent a strange light to his eyes.
“I am—Miss Kendall, I have half a mind to tell you who I am.”
She threw a quick look into his face and drew back a little; but she said graciously:
“Of course you will tell me who you are.”
There was a moment’s silence, then slowly he asked:
“Do you remember—Bobby McGinnis?”
“Bobby? Bobby McGinnis?” The blue eyes half closed and seemed to be looking far into the past. Suddenly they opened wide and flashed a glad recognition into his face. “And are you Bobby McGinnis?”
“Yes.”
“Why, of course I remember Bobby McGinnis,” she cried, with outstretched hand. “It was you that found me when I was a wee bit of a girl and lost in New York, thoughthatI don’t remember. But we used to play together there in Houghtonsville,and it was you that got me the contract——” She stopped abruptly and turned her face away. The man saw her lips and chin tremble. “I can’t speak of it—even now,” she said brokenly, after a moment. Then, gently: “Tell me of yourself. How came you here?”
“I came here at once from Houghtonsville.” McGinnis’s voice, too, was not quite steady. She nodded, and he went on without explaining the “at once”—he had thought she would understand. “I went to work in the mills, and—I have been here ever since. That is all,” he said simply.
“But how happened it that you came—here?”
A dull red flushed the man’s cheeks. His eyes swerved from her level gaze, then came back suddenly with the old boyish twinkle in their depths.
“I came,” he began slowly, “well, to look after your affairs.”
“Myaffairs!”
“Yes. I was fifteen. I deemed somehow that I was the one remaining friend who had your best interests at heart. Icouldn’tlook after you, naturally—in a girls’ school—so I did the next best thing. I looked after your inheritance.”
“Dear old Bobby!” murmured the girl. Andthe man who heard knew, in spite of a conscious throb of joy, that it was the fifteen-year-old lad that Margaret Kendall saw before her, not the man-grown standing at her side.
“I suppose I thought,” he resumed after a moment, “that if I were not here some one might pick up the mills and run off with them.”
“And now?” She was back in the present, and her eyes were merry.
“And now? Well, now I come nearer realizing my limitations, perhaps,” he laughed. “At any rate, I learned long ago that your interests were in excellent hands, and that my presence could do very little good, even if they had not been in such fine shape.... But I am keeping you,” he broke off suddenly, backing away from the car. “Are you—can you—you do not need me any longer to run the machine? You’ll not go back through the town, of course.”
“No, I shall not go back through the town,” shuddered the girl. “And I can drive very well by myself now, I am sure,” she declared. And he did not know that for a moment she had been tempted to give quite the opposite answer. “I shall go on to the next turn, and then around homeby the other way.... But I shall see you soon again?—you will come to see me?” she finished, as she held out her hand.
McGinnis shook his head.
“Miss Kendall, in the kindness of her heart, forgets,” he reminded her quietly. “Bobby McGinnis is not on Hilcrest’s calling list.”
“But Bobby McGinnis is my friend,” retorted Miss Kendall with a bright smile, “and Hilcrest always welcomes my friends.”
Still standing under the shadow of the great tree, McGinnis watched the runabout until a turn of the road hid it from sight.
“I thought ‘twould be easier after I’d met her once, face to face, and spoken to her,” he was murmuring softly; “but it’s going to be harder, I’m afraid—harder than when I just caught a glimpse of her once in a while and knew that she was here.”
Margaret’s morning ride through the town did not have quite the effect she had hoped it would. By daylight the place looked even worse than by the softening twilight. But she was haunted now, not so much by the wan faces of the workers as by the jeering countenances of a mob of mischievous boys. To be sure, the unexpected meeting with Bobby McGinnis had in a measure blurred the vision, but it was still there; and at night she awoke sometimes with those horrid shouts in her ears. Of one thing it had cured her, however: she no longer wished to see for herself the shabby cottages and the people in them. She gave money, promptly and liberally—so liberally, in fact, that Mrs. Merideth quite caught her breath at the size of the bills that the young woman stuffed into her hands.
“But, my dear, so much!” she had remonstrated.
“No, no—take it, do!” Margaret had pleaded. “Give it to that society to do as they like with it. And when it’s gone there’ll be more.”
Mrs. Merideth had taken the money then without more ado. The one thing she wished particularly to avoid in the matter was controversy—for controversy meant interest.
There had been one other result of that morning’s experience—a result which to Frank Spencer was perhaps quite as startling as had been the roll of bills to his sister.
“I met your Mr. Robert McGinnis when I was out this morning,” Margaret had said that night at dinner. “What sort of man is he?”
Before Frank could reply Ned had answered for him.
“He’s a little tin god on wheels, Margaret, that can do no wrong. That’s what he is.”
“Ned!” remonstrated Mrs. Merideth in a horror that was not all playful. Then to Margaret: “He is a very faithful fellow and an efficient workman, my dear, who is a great help to Frank. But how and where didyousee him?”
Margaret laughed.
“I’ll tell you,” she promised in response to Mrs. Merideth’s question; “but I haven’t heard yet from the head of the house.”
“I can add little to what has been said,” declaredFrank with a smile. “He is all that they pictured him. He is the king-pin, the keystone—anything you please. But, why?”
“Nothing, only I know him. He is an old friend.”
“You know him!—afriend!” The three voices were one in shocked amazement.
“Yes, long ago in Houghtonsville,” smiled Margaret. “He knew me still longer ago than that, but that part I remember only as it has been told to me. He was the little boy who found me crying in the streets of New York, and took me home to his mother.”
There was a stunned silence around the table. It was the first time the Spencers had ever heard Margaret speak voluntarily of her childhood, and it frightened them. It seemed to bring into the perfumed air of the dining-room the visible presence of poverty and misery. They feared, too, for Margaret: this was the one thing that must be guarded against—the possible return to the morbid fancies of her youth. And this man—
“Why, how strange!” murmured Mrs. Merideth, breaking the pause. “But then, after all, he’ll not annoy you, I fancy.”
“Of course not,” cut in Ned. “McGinnis is no fool, and he knows his place.”
“Most assuredly,” declared Frank, with a sudden tightening of his lips. “You’ll not see him again, I fancy. If he annoys you, let me know.”
“Oh, but ‘twon’t be an annoyance,” smiled Margaret. “Iaskedhim to come and see me.”
“You—asked—him—to come!” To the Spencers it was as if she had taken one of the big black wheels from the mills and suggested its desirability for the drawing-room. “You asked him to come!”
Was there a slight lifting of the delicately moulded chin opposite?—the least possible dilation of the sensitive nostrils? Perhaps. Yet Margaret’s voice when she answered, was clear and sweet.
“Yes. I told him that Hilcrest would always welcome my friends, I was sure. And—wasn’t I right?”
“Of course—certainly,” three almost inaudible voices had murmured. And that had been the end of it, except that the two brothers and the sister had talked it over in low distressed voices after Margaret had gone up-stairs to bed.
Two weeks had passed now, however, since that memorable night, and the veranda of Hilcrest had not yet echoed to the sound of young McGinnis’s feet. The Spencers breathed a little more freely in consequence. It might be possible, after all, thought they, thatMcGinnishad some sense!—and the emphasis was eloquent.
Miss Kendall was sitting alone before the great fireplace in the hall at Hilcrest when Betty, the parlor maid, found her. Betty’s nose, always inclined to an upward tilt, was even more disdainful than usual this morning. In fact, Betty’s whole self from cap to dainty shoes radiated strong disapproval.
“There’s a young person—a very impertinent young person at the side door, Miss, who insists upon seeing you,” she said severely.
“Me? Seeing me? Who is it, Betty?”
“I don’t know, Miss. She looks like a mill girl.” Even Betty’s voice seemed to shrink from the “mill” as if it feared contamination.
“A mill girl? Then it must be Mrs. Merideth or Mr. Spencer that she wants to see.”
“She said you, Miss. She said she wanted to see——” Betty stopped, looking a little frightened.
“Yes, go on, Betty.”
“That—that she wanted to see MissMaggieKendall,” blurted out the horrified Betty. “‘Mag of the Alley.’”
Miss Kendall sprang to her feet.
“Bring the girl here, Betty,” she directed quickly. “I will see her at once.”
Just what and whom she expected to see, Margaret could not have told. For the first surprised instant it seemed that some dimly remembered Patty or Clarabella or Arabella from the past must be waiting out there at the door; the next moment she knew that this was impossible, for time, even in the Alley, could not have stood still, and Patty and the twins must be women-grown now.
Out at the side door the “impertinent young person” received Betty’s order to “come in” with an airy toss of her head, and a jeering “There, what’d I tell ye?” but once in the subdued luxury of soft rugs and silken hangings, and face to face with a beauteous vision in a trailing pale blue gown, she became at once only a very much frightened little girl about eleven years old.
At a sign from Miss Kendall, Betty withdrew and left the two alone.
“What is your name, little girl?” asked Miss Kendall gently.
The child swallowed and choked a little.
“Nellie Magoon, ma’am, if you please, thank you,” she stammered.
“Where do you live?”
“Down on the Prospect Hill road.”
“Who sent you to me?”
“Mis’ Durgin.”
Miss Kendall frowned and paused a moment. As yet there had not been a name that she recognized, nor could she find in the child’s face the slightest resemblance to any one she had ever seen before.
“But I don’t understand,” she protested. “Who is this Mrs. Durgin? What did she tell you to say to me?”
“She said, ‘Tell her Patty is in trouble an’ wants ter see Mag of the Alley,’” murmured the child, as if reciting a lesson.
“‘Patty’? ‘Patty’? Not Patty Murphy!” cried Miss Kendall, starting forward and grasping the child’s arm.
Nellie drew back, half frightened.
“Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. I don’t know, ma’am,” she stammered.
“But how came she to send for me? Who told her I was here?”
“The boss.”
“The—boss!”
“Yes. Mr. McGinnis, ye know. He said as how you was here.”
“Bobby!” cried Miss Kendall, releasing the child’s arm and falling back a step. “Why, of course, it’s Patty—it must be Patty! I’ll go to her at once. Wait here while I dress.” And she hurried across the hall and up the broad stairway.
Back by the door Nellie watched the disappearing blue draperies with wistful eyes that bore also a trace of resentment. “Go and dress” indeed! As if there could be anything more altogether to be desired than that beautiful trailing blue gown! She was even more dissatisfied ten minutes later when Miss Kendall came back in the trim brown suit and walking-hat—it would have been so much more delightful to usher into Mrs. Durgin’s presence that sumptuous robe of blue! She forgot her disappointment, however, a little later, in the excitement of rolling along at Miss Kendall’s side in the Hilcrest carriage, with the imposing-lookingcoachman in the Spencer livery towering above her on the seat in front.
It had been Miss Kendall’s first thought to order the runabout, but a sudden remembrance of her morning’s experience a few weeks before caused her to think that the stalwart John and the horses might be better; so John, somewhat to his consternation, it must be confessed, had been summoned to take his orders from Nellie as to roads and turns. He now sat, stern and dignified, in the driver’s seat, showing by the very lines of his stiffly-held body his entire disapproval of the whole affair.
Nor were John and Betty the only ones at Hilcrest who were conscious of keen disapproval that morning. The mistress herself, from an upper window, watched with dismayed eyes the departure of the carriage.
“I’ve found Patty, the little girl who was so good to me in New York,” Margaret had explained breathlessly, flying into the room three minutes before. “She’s in trouble and has sent for me. I’m taking John and the horses, so I’ll be all right. Don’t worry!” And with that she was gone, leaving behind her a woman too dazed to reply by so much as a word.
Hilcrest was not out of sight before Margaret turned to the child at her side.
“You said she was in trouble—my friend, Patty. What is it?” she questioned.
“It’s little Maggie. She’s sick.”
“Maggie? NottheMaggie, the little brown-eyed girl in the pink calico dress, who fell down almost in front of our auto!”
Nellie turned abruptly, her thin little face alight.
“Gee! Was that you? Did you give her the money? Say, now, ain’t that queer!”
“Then it is Maggie, and she’s Patty’s little girl,” cried Margaret. “And to think I was so near and didn’t know! But tell me about her. What is the matter?”
Down in the shabby little cottage on the Hill road Mrs. Durgin walked the floor, vibrating between the window and the low bed in the corner. By the stove sat Mrs. Magoon, mending a pair of trousers—and talking. To those who knew Mrs. Magoon, it was never necessary to add that last—if Mrs. Magoon was there, so also was the talking.
“It don’t do no good ter watch the pot—‘twon’t b’ile no quicker,” she was saying now, her eyes on the woman who was anxiously scanning the road from the window.
“Yes, I know,” murmured Mrs. Durgin, resolutely turning her back on the window and going over to the bed. Sixty seconds later, however, she was again in her old position at the window, craning her neck to look far up the road.
“How’s Maggie doin’ now?” asked Mrs. Magoon.
“She’s asleep.”
“Well, she better be awake,” retorted Mrs.Magoon, “so’s ter keep her ma out o’ mischief. Come, come, Mis’ Durgin, why don’t ye settle down an’ do somethin’? Jest call it she ain’t a-comin’, then ’twill be all the more happyfyin’ surprise if she does.”
“But she is a-comin’.”
“How do ye know she is?”
“’Cause she’s Maggie Kendall, an’ she was Mag of the Alley: an’ Mag of the Alley don’t go back on her friends.”
“But she’s rich now.”
“I know she is, an’ you don’t think rich folks is any good; but I do, an’ thar’s the diff’rence. Mr. McGinnis has seen her, an’ he says she’s jest as nice as ever.”
“Mebbe she is nice ter folks o’ her sort, but even Mr. McGinnis don’t know that you’ve sent fur her ter come ’way off down here.”
“I know it, but—Mis’ Magoon, she’s come!” broke off Mrs. Durgin; and something in her face and voice made the woman by the stove drop her work and run to the window.
Drawn up before the broken-hinged, half-open gate, were the Spencers’ famous span of thoroughbreds, prancing, arching their handsomenecks, and apparently giving the mighty personage on the driver’s seat all that he wanted to do to hold them. Behind, in the luxurious carriage, sat a ragged little girl, and what to Patty Durgin was a wonderful vision in golden brown.
Mrs. Durgin was thoroughly frightened. She,shehad summoned this glorious creature to come to her, because, indeed, her little girl, Maggie, was sick! And where, in the vision before her, was there a trace of Mag of the Alley? Just what she had expected to see, Mrs. Durgin did not know—but certainly not this; and she fairly shook in her shoes as the visible evidence of her audacity, in the shape of the vision in golden brown, walked up the little path from the gate.
It was Mrs. Magoon who had to go to the door.
The young woman on the door-step started eagerly forward, but fell back with a murmured, “Oh, but you can’t be—Patty!”
Over by the window the tall, black-eyed woman stirred then, as if by sheer force of will.
“No, no, it’s me that’s Patty,” she began hurriedly. “An’ I hadn’t oughter sent fur ye; but”—her words were silenced by a pair ofbrown-clad arms that were flung around her neck.
“Patty—it is Patty!” cried an eager voice, and Mrs. Durgin found herself looking into the well-remembered blue eyes of the old-time Mag of the Alley.
Later, when Mrs. Magoon had taken herself and her amazed ejaculations, together with her round-eyed daughter, home—which was, after all, merely the other side of the shabby little house—Patty and Margaret sat down to talk. In the bed in the corner little Maggie still slept, and they lowered their voices that they might not wake her.
“Now, tell me everything,” commanded Margaret. “I want to know everything that’s happened.”
Patty shook her head.
“Thar ain’t much, an’ what thar is ain’t interestin’,” she said. “We jest lived, an’ we’re livin’ now. Nothin’ much happens.”
“But you married.”
Patty flushed. Her eyes fell.
“Yes.”
“And your husband—he’s—living?”
“Yes.”
Margaret hesitated. This was plainly an unpleasant subject, yet if she were to give any help thatwashelp—
Patty saw the hesitation, and divined its cause.
“You—you better leave Sam out,” she said miserably. “He has ter be left out o’ most things. Sam—drinks.”
“Oh, but we aren’t going to leave Sam out,” retorted Margaret, brightly; and at the cheery tone Patty raised her head.
“He didn’t used ter be left out, once—when I married him eight years ago,” she declared. “We worked in the mill—both of us, an’ done well.”
“Here?”
Patty turned her eyes away. All the animation fled from her face and left it gray and pinched.
“No. We hain’t been here but two years. We jest kind of drifted here from the last place. We don’t never stay long—in one place.”
“And the twins—where are they?”
A spasm of pain tightened Patty’s lips.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You—don’t—know!”
“No. They lived with us at first, an’ worked some in the mill. Arabella couldn’t much; you know she was lame. After Sam got—worse, he didn’t like ter have ’em ‘round, an’ ‘course they found it out. One night he—struck Arabella, an’ ’course that settled things. Clarabella wouldn’t let her stay thar another minute, an’—an’ I wouldn’t neither. Jest think—an’ her lame, an’ we always treatin’ her so gentle! I give ’em what little money I had, an’ they left ‘fore mornin’. I couldn’t go. My little Maggie wa’n’t but three days old.”
“But you heard from them—you knew where they went?”
“Yes, once or twice. They started fur New York, an’ got thar all right. We was down in Jersey then, an’ ‘twa’n’t fur. They found the Whalens an’ went back ter them. After that I didn’t hear. You know the twins wa’n’t much fur writin’, an’—well, we left whar we was, anyhow. I’ve wrote twice, but thar hain’t nothin’ come of it.... But I hadn’t oughter run on so,” she broke off suddenly. “You was so good ter come. Mis’ Magoon said you—you wouldn’t want to.”
“Want to? Of course I wanted to!”
“I know; but it had been so long, an’ we hadn’t never heard from you since you got the Whalens their new—that is——” she stopped, a painful red dyeing her cheeks.
“Yes, I know,” said Margaret, gently. “You thought we had forgotten you, and no wonder. But you know now? Bobby told you that——” her voice broke, and she did not finish her sentence.
Patty nodded, her eyes averted. She could not speak.
“Those years—afterward, were never very clear to me,” went on Margaret, unsteadily. “It was all so terrible—so lonely. I know I begged to go back—to the Alley; and I talked of you and the others constantly. But they kept everything from me. They never spoke of those years in New York, and they surrounded me with all sorts of beautiful, interesting things, and did everything in the world to make me happy. In time they succeeded—in a way. But I think I never quite forgot. There was always something—somewhere—behind things; yet after a while it seemed like a dream, or like a life that some one else had lived.”
Margaret had almost forgotten Patty’s presence. Her eyes were on the broken-hinged gate out the window, and her voice was so low as to be almost inaudible. It was a cry from little Maggie that roused her, and together with Patty she sprang toward the bed.
“My—lucky—stars!” murmured the child, a little later, in dim recollection as she gazed into the visitor’s face.
“You precious baby! And it shall be ‘lucky stars’—you’ll see!” cried Margaret.
It was, indeed, “lucky stars,” as little Maggie soon found out. Others found it out, too; but to some of these it was not “lucky” stars.
At the dinner table on that first night after the visit to Patty’s house, Margaret threw the family into no little consternation by abruptly asking:
“How do you go to work to get men and things to put houses into livable shape?... I don’t suppose I did word it in a very businesslike manner,” she added laughingly, in response to Frank Spencer’s amazed ejaculation.
“But what—perhaps I don’t quite understand,” he murmured.
“No, of course you don’t,” replied Margaret; “and no wonder. I’ll explain. You see I’ve found another of my friends. It’s the little girl, Patty, with whom I lived three years in New York. She’s down in one of the mill cottages, and it leaks and is in bad shape generally. I want to fix it up.”
There was a dazed silence; then Frank Spencer recovered his wits and his voice.
“By all means,” he rejoined hastily. “It shall be attended to at once. Just give me your directions and I will send the men around there right away.”
“Thank you; then I’ll meet them there and tell them just what I want done.”
Frank Spencer moistened his lips, which had grown unaccountably dry.
“But, my dear Margaret,” he remonstrated, “surely it isn’t necessary that you yourself should be subjected to such annoyance. I can attend to all that is necessary.”
“Oh, but I don’t mind a bit,” returned Margaret, brightly. “Iwantto do it. It’s for Patty, you know.” And Frank Spencer could only fall back in his chair with an uneasy glance at his sister.
Before the week was out there seemed to be a good many things that were “for Patty, you know.” There was the skilled physician summoned to prescribe for Maggie; and there was the strong, capable woman hired to care for her, and to give the worn-out mother a much needed rest. There were the large baskets of fruit andvegetables, and the boxes of beautiful flowers. In fact there seemed to be almost nothing throughout the whole week that was not “for Patty, you know.”
Even Margaret’s time—that, too, was given to Patty. The golf links and the tennis court were deserted. Neither Ned nor the beautiful October weather could tempt Margaret to a single game. The music room, too, was silent, and the piano was closed.
Down in the little house on the Prospect Hill road, however, a radiant young woman was superintending the work that was fast putting the cottage into a shape that was very much “livable.” Meanwhile this same radiant young woman was getting acquainted with her namesake.
“Lucky Stars,” as the child insisted upon calling her, and Maggie were firm friends. Good food and proper care were fast bringing the little girl back to health; and there was nothing she so loved to do as to “play” with the beautiful young lady who had never yet failed to bring toy or game or flower for her delight.
“And how old are you now?” Margaret would laughingly ask each day, just to hear the prompt response:
“I’m ‘most five goin’ on six an’ I’ll be twelve ter-morrow.”
Margaret always chuckled over this retort and never tired of hearing it, until one day Patty sharply interfered.
“Don’t—please don’t! I can’t bear it when you don’t half know what it means.”
“When I don’t know what it means! Why, Patty!” exclaimed Margaret.
“Yes. It’s Sam. He learned it to her.”
“Well?” Margaret’s eyes were still puzzled.
“He likes it. Hewantsher ter be twelve, ye know,” explained Patty with an effort. Then, as she saw her meaning was still not clear, she added miserably:
“She can work then—in the mills.”
“In the mills—at twelve years old!”
“That’s the age, ye know, when they can git their papers—that is, if it’s summer—vacation time: an’ they looks out that ’tis summer, most generally, when they does gits ’em. After that it don’t count; they jest works, lots of ’em, summer or winter, school or no school.”
“The age! Do you mean that they let mere children, twelve years old, work in those mills?”
For a moment Patty stared silently. Then she shook her head.
“I reckon mebbe ye don’t know much about it,” she said wearily. “They don’t wait till they’s twelve. They jest says they’s twelve. Nellie Magoon’s eleven, an’ Bess is ten, an’ Susie McDermot ain’t but nine—but they’s all twelve on the mill books. Sam’s jest a-learnin’ Maggie ter say she’s twelve even now, an’ the minute she’s big enough ter work she will be twelve. It makes me jest sick; an’ that’s why I can’t bear ter hear her say it.”
Margaret shuddered. Her face lost a little of its radiant glow, and her hand trembled as she raised it to her head.
“You are right—I did not know,” she said faintly. “There must be something that can be done. Theremustbe. I will see.”
And she did see. That night she once more followed her guardian into the little den off the library.
“It’s business again,” she began, smiling faintly; “and it’s the mills. May I speak to you a moment?”
“Of course you may,” cried the man, trying tomake his voice so cordial that there should be visible in his manner no trace of his real dismay at her request. “What is it?”
Margaret did not answer at once. Her head drooped forward a little. She had seated herself near the desk, and her left hand and arm rested along the edge of its smooth flat top. The man’s gaze drifted from her face to the arm, the slender wrist and the tapering fingers so clearly outlined in all their fairness against the dark mahogany, and so plainly all unfitted for strife or struggle. With a sudden movement he leaned forward and covered the slim fingers with his own warm-clasping hand.
“Margaret, dear child, don’t!” he begged. “It breaks my heart to see you like this. You are carrying the whole world on those two frail shoulders of yours.”
“No, no, it’s not the whole world at all,” protested the girl. “It’s only a wee small part of it—and such a defenseless little part, too. It’s the children down at the mills.”
Unconsciously the man straightened himself. His clasp on the outstretched hand loosened until Margaret, as if in answer to the stern determinationof his face, drew her hand away and raised her head until her eyes met his unfalteringly.
“It is useless, of course, to pretend not to understand,” he began stiffly. “I suppose that that altogether too officious young McGinnis has been asking your help for some of his pet schemes.”
“On the contrary, Mr. McGinnis has not spoken to me of the mill workers,” corrected Margaret, quietly, but with a curious little thrill that resolved itself into a silent exultation that there was then at least one at the mills on whose aid she might count. “I have not seen him, indeed, since that first morning I met him,” she finished coldly. Though Margaret would not own it to herself, the fact that she had not seen the young man, Robert McGinnis, had surprised and disappointed her not a little—Margaret Kendall was not used to having her presence and her gracious invitations ignored.
“Oh, then you haven’t seen him,” murmured her guardian; and there was a curious intonation of relief in his voice. “Who, then, has been talking to you?”
“No one—in the way you mean. Patty inadvertently mentioned it to-day, and I questionedher. I was shocked and distressed. Those little children—just think of it—twelve years old, and working in the mills!”
The man made a troubled gesture.
“But, my dear Margaret, I did not put them there. Their parents did it.”
“But you could refuse to take them.”
“Why should I?” he shrugged. “They would merely go into some other man’s mill.”
“But you don’t know the worst of it,” moaned the girl. “They’ve lied to you. They aren’t even twelve, some of them. They’re babies of nine and ten!”
She paused expectantly, but he did not speak. He only turned his head so that she could not see his eyes.
“You did not know it, of course,” she went on feverishly. “But you do now. And surely now,nowyou can do something.”
Still he was silent. Then he turned sharply.
“Margaret, I beg of you to believe me when I say that you do not understand the matter at all. Those people are poor. They need the money. You would deprive some of the families of two-thirds of their means of support if you took awaywhat the children earn. Help them, pity them, be as charitable as you like. That is well and good; but, Margaret, don’t, for heaven’s sake, let your heart run away with your head when it comes to the business part of it!”
“Business!—with babies nine years old!”
The man sprang to his feet and walked twice the length of the room; then he turned about and faced the scornful eyes of the girl by the desk.
“Margaret, don’t look at me as if you thought I was a fiend incarnate. I regret this sort of thing as much as you do. Indeed I do. But my hands are tied. I am simply a part of a great machine—a gigantic system, and I must run my mills as other men do. Surely you must see that. Just think it over, and give me the credit at least for knowing a little more of the business than you do, when I and my father before me, have been here as many years as you have days. Come, please don’t let us talk of this thing any more to-night. You are tired and overwrought, and I don’t think you realize yourself what you are asking.”
“Very well, I will go,” sighed Margaret, risingwearily to her feet. “But I can’t forget it. There must be some way out of it. There must be some way out of it—somehow—some time.”
There came a day when there seemed to be nothing left to do for Patty. Maggie was well, and at play again in the tiny yard. The yard itself was no longer strewn with tin cans and bits of paper, nor did the gate hang half-hinged in slovenly decrepitude. The house rejoiced in new paper, paint, and window-glass, and the roof showed a spotted surface that would defy the heaviest shower. Within, before a cheery fire, Patty sewed industriously on garments which Miss Kendall no wise needed, but for which Miss Kendall would pay much money.
Patty did not work in the mills now; Margaret had refused to let her go back, saying that she wanted lots of sewing done, and Patty could do that instead. Patty’s own wardrobe, as well as that of the child, Maggie, was supplied for a year ahead; and the pantry and the storeroom of the little house fairly groaned with good things to eat. Even Sam, true to Margaret’s promise, was not “left out,” as was shown by his appearance. Sam,stirred by the girl’s cheery encouragement and tactful confidence, held up his head sometimes now with a trace of his old manliness, and had even been known to keep sober for two whole days at a time.
There did, indeed, seem nothing left to do for Patty, and Margaret found herself with the old idleness on her hands.
At Hilcrest Mrs. Merideth and her brothers were doing everything in their power to make Margaret happy. They were frightened and dismayed at the girl’s “infatuation for that mill woman,” as they termed Margaret’s interest in Patty; and they had ever before them the haunting vision of the girl’s childhood morbidness, which they so feared to see return.
To the Spencers, happiness for Margaret meant pleasure, excitement, and—as Ned expressed it—“something doing.” At the first hint, then, of leisure on the part of Margaret, these three vied with each other to fill that leisure to the brim.
Two or three guests were invited—just enough to break the monotony of the familiar faces, though not enough to spoil the intimacy and render outside interests easy. It was December,and too late for picnics, but it was yet early in the month, and driving and motoring were still possible, and even enjoyable. The goal now was not a lake or a mountain, to be sure; but might be a not too distant city with a matinée or a luncheon to give zest to the trip.
Ned, in particular, was indefatigable in his efforts to please; and Margaret could scarcely move that she did not find him at her elbow with some suggestion for her gratification ranging all the way from a dinner-party to a footstool.
Margaret was not quite at ease about Ned. There was an exclusiveness in his devotions, and a tenderness in his ministrations that made her a little restless in his presence, particularly if she found herself alone with him. Ned was her good friend—her comrade. She was very sure that she did not wish him to be anything else; and if he should try to be—there would be an end to the comradeship, at all events, if not to the friendship.
By way of defense against these possibilities she adopted a playful air of whimsicality and fell to calling him the name by which he had introduced himself on that first day when she had seen him at the head of the hillside path—“Uncle Ned.” Shedid not do this many times, however, for one day he turned upon her a white face working with emotion.
“I am not your uncle,” he burst out; and Margaret scarcely knew whether to laugh or to cry, he threw so much tragedy into the simple words.
“No?” she managed to return lightly. “Oh, but you said you were, you know; and when a man says——”
“But I say otherwise now,” he cut in, leaning toward her until his breath stirred the hair at her temples. “Margaret,” he murmured tremulously, “it’s not ‘uncle,’—but there’s something else—a name that——”
“Oh, but I couldn’t learn another,” interrupted Margaret, with nervous precipitation, as she rose hurriedly to her feet, “so soon as this, you know! Why, you’ve just cast me off as a niece, and it takes time for me to realize the full force of that blow,” she finished gayly, as she hurried away.
In her own room she drew a deep breath of relief; but all day, and for many days afterward, she was haunted by the hurt look in Ned’s eyes as she had turned away. It reminded her of the expression she had seen once in the pictured eyes of adog that had been painted by a great artist. She remembered, too, the title of the picture: “Wounded in the house of his friends,” and it distressed her not a little; and yet—Ned was her comrade and her very good friend, and that was what he must be.
Not only this, however, caused Margaret restless days and troubled nights: there were those children down in the mills—those little children, nine, ten, twelve years old. It was too cold now to stay long on the veranda; but there was many a day, and there were some nights, when Margaret looked out of the east windows of Hilcrest and gazed with fascinated, yet shrinking eyes at the mills.
She was growing morbid—she owned that to herself. She knew nothing at all of the mills, and she had never seen a child at work in them; yet she pictured great black wheels relentlessly crushing out young lives, and she recoiled from the touch of her trailing silks—they seemed alive with shrunken little forms and wasted fingers. Day after day she turned over in her mind the most visionary projects for stopping those wheels, or for removing those children beyondtheir reach. Even though her eyes might be on the merry throngs of a gay city street—her thoughts were still back in the mill town with the children; and even though her body might be flying from home at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour in Frank’s big six-cylinder Speeder, her real self was back at Hilcrest with the mills always in sight.
Once again she appealed to her guardian, but five minutes’ talk showed her the uselessness of anything she could say—it was true, she did notknowanything about it.
It was that very fact, perhaps, which first sent her thoughts in a new direction. If, as was true, she did not know anything about it, how better could she remedy the situation than by finding out something about it? And almost instantly came the memory of her guardian’s words: “I suppose that that altogether too officious young McGinnis has been asking your help for some of his schemes.”
Bobby knew. Bobby had schemes. Bobby was the one to help her. By all means, she would send for Bobby!
That night, in a cramped little room in one ofthe mill boarding-houses, a square-jawed, gray-eyed young man received a note that sent the blood in a tide of red to his face, and made his hands shake until the paper in his long, sinewy fingers fluttered like an aspen leaf in a breeze. Yet the note was very simple. It read:
“Will you come, please, to see me to-morrow night? I want to ask some questions about the children at the mills.”
And it was signed, “Margaret Kendall.”
With a relief which she did not attempt to hide from herself, Margaret saw the male members of the family at Hilcrest leave early the next morning on a trip from which they could not return until the next day; and with a reluctance which she could not hide from either herself or Mrs. Merideth, she said that afternoon:
“Mr. McGinnis is coming to see me this evening, Aunt Della. I sent for him. You know I am interested in the children at the mills, and I wanted to ask him some questions.”
Mrs. Merideth was dumb with dismay. For some days Margaret’s apparent inactivity had lulled her into a feeling of security. And now, with her brothers away, the blow which they had so dreaded for weeks had fallen—McGinnis was coming. Summoning all her strength, Mrs. Merideth finally managed to murmur a faint remonstrance that Margaret should trouble herself overa matter that could not be helped; then with an earnest request that Margaret should not commit herself to any foolish promises, she fled to her own room, fearful lest, in her perturbation, she should say something which she would afterward regret.
When Miss Kendall came down-stairs at eight o’clock that night she found waiting for her in the drawing-room—into which McGinnis had been shown by her express orders—a young man whose dress, attitude, and expression radiated impersonality and business, in spite of his sumptuous surroundings.
In directing that the young man should be shown into the drawing-room instead of into the more informal library or living-room, Margaret had vaguely intended to convey to him the impression that he was a highly-prized friend, and as such was entitled to all honor; but she had scarcely looked into the cold gray eyes, or touched the half-reluctantly extended fingers before she knew that all such efforts had been without avail. The young man had not come to pay a visit: he was an employee who had obeyed the command of one in authority.
McGinnis stood just inside the door, hat in hand. His face was white, and his jaw stern-set. His manner was quiet, and his voice when he spoke was steady. There was nothing about him to tell the girl—who was vainly trying to thaw the stiff frigidity of his reserve—that he had spent all day and half the night in lashing himself into just this manner that so displeased her.
“You sent for me?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” smiled the girl. “And doesn’t your conscience prick you, sir, because Ihadto send for you, when you should have come long ago of your own accord to see me?” she demanded playfully, motioning him to a seat. Then, before he could reply, she went on hurriedly: “I wanted to see you very much. By something that Mr. Spencer said the other evening I suspected that you were interested in the children who work in the mills—particularly interested. And—you are?”
“Yes, much interested.”
“And you know them—lots of them? You know their parents, and how they live?”
“Yes, I know them well—too well.” He added the last softly, almost involuntarily.
The girl heard, and threw a quick look of sympathy into his eyes.
“Good! You are just the one I want, then,” she cried. “And you will help me; won’t you?”
McGinnis hesitated. An eager light had leaped to his eyes. For a moment he dared not speak lest his voice break through the lines of stern control he had set for it.
“I shall be glad to give you any help I can,” he said at last, steadily; “but Mr. Spencer, of course, knows——” he paused, leaving his sentence unfinished.
“But that is exactly it,” interposed Margaret, earnestly. “Mr. Spencer does not know—at least, he does not know personally about the mill people, I mean. He told me long ago that you stood between him and them, and had for a long time. It is you who must tell me.”
“Very well, I will do my best. Just what—do you want to know?”
“Everything. And I want not only to be told, but to see for myself. I want you to take me through the mills, and afterward I want to visit some of the houses where the children live.”
“Miss Kendall!” The distressed consternation in the man’s voice was unmistakable.
“Is it so bad as that?” questioned the girl. “You don’t want me to see all these things? All the more reason why I should, then! If conditions are bad, help is needed; but before help can be effectual, or even given at all, the conditions must be understood. That is what I mean to do—understand the conditions. How many children are there employed in the mills, please?”
McGinnis hesitated.
“Well, there are some—hundreds,” he acknowledged. “Of course many of them are twelve and fourteen and fifteen, and that is bad enough; but there are others younger. You see the age limit of this state is lower than some. Many parents bring their children here to live, so that they can put them into the mills.”
Margaret shuddered.
“Then it is true, as Patty said. There are children there nine and ten years old!”
“Yes, even younger than that, I fear. Only last week I turned away a man who brought a puny little thing with a request for work. He swore she was twelve. I’d hate to tell you howold—or rather, how young, she really looked. I sent him home with a few remarks which I hope he will remember. She was only one, however, out of many. I am not always able to do what I would like to do in such cases—I am not the only man at the mills. You must realize that.”
“Yes, I realize it, and I understand why you can’t always do what you wish. But just suppose you tell me now some of the things you would like to do—if you could.” And she smiled encouragement straight into his eyes until in spite of his stern resolve he forgot himself and his surroundings, and began to talk.
Robert McGinnis was no silver-tongued orator, but he knew his subject, and his heart was in it. For long months he had been battling alone against the evils that had little by little filled his soul with horror. Accustomed heretofore only to rebuffs and angry denunciations of his “officious meddling,” he now suddenly found a tenderly sympathetic ear eagerly awaiting his story, and a pair of luminous blue eyes already glistening with unshed tears.
No wonder McGinnis talked, and talked well. He seemed to be speaking to the Maggie of longago—the little girl who stood ready and anxious to “divvy up” with all the world. Then suddenly his eyes fell on the rich folds of the girl’s dress, and on the velvety pile of the rug beneath her feet.
“I have said too much,” he broke off sharply, springing to his feet. “I forgot myself.”
“On the contrary you have not said half enough,” declared the girl, rising too; “and I mean to go over the mills at once, if you’ll be so good as to take me. I’ll let you know when. And come to see me again, please—without being sent for,” she suggested merrily, adding with a pretty touch of earnestness: “We are a committee of two; and to do good work the committee must meet!”
McGinnis never knew exactly how he got home that night. The earth was beneath him, but he did not seem to touch it. The sky was above him—he was nearer that. But, in spite of this nearness, the stars seemed dim—he was thinking of the light in a pair of glorious blue eyes.
McGinnis told himself that it was because of his mill people—this elation that possessed him. He was grateful that they had found a friend. Hedid not ask himself later whether it was also because of his mill people that he sat up until far into the morning, with his eyes dreamily fixed on the note in his hand signed, “Margaret Kendall.”
Frank Spencer found the mental atmosphere of Hilcrest in confusion when he returned from his two days’ trip. Margaret had repeated to Mrs. Merideth the substance of what McGinnis had told her, drawing a vivid picture of the little children wearing out their lives in plain sight of the windows of Hilcrest. Mrs. Merideth had been shocked and dismayed, though she hardly knew which she deplored the more—that such conditions existed, or that Margaret should know of them. At Margaret’s avowed determination to go over the mills, and into the operatives’ houses, she lifted her hands in horrified protest, and begged her to report the matter to the Woman’s Guild, and leave the whole thing in charge of the committee.
“But don’t you see that they can’t reach the seat of the trouble?” Margaret had objected. “Why, even that money which I intended for little Maggie went into a general fund, andnever reached its specified destination.” And Mrs. Merideth could only sigh and murmur:
“But, my dear, it’s so unnecessary and so dreadful for you to mix yourself up personally with such people!”
When her brother came home, Mrs. Merideth went to him. Frank was a man: surely Frank could do something! But Frank merely grew white and stern, and went off into his own den, shutting himself up away from everybody. The next morning, after a fifteen minute talk with Margaret, he sought his sister. His face was drawn into deep lines, and his eyes looked as if he had not slept.
“Say no more to Margaret,” he entreated. “It is useless. She is her own mistress, of course, in spite of her insistence that I am still her guardian; and she must be allowed to do as she likes in this matter. Make her home here happy, and do not trouble her. We must not make her quite—hate us!” His voice broke over the last two words, and he was gone before Mrs. Merideth could make any reply.
Some twenty-four hours later, young McGinnis at the mills was summoned to the telephone.
“If you are not too busy,” called a voice that sent a quick throb of joy to the young man’s pulse, “the other half of the committee would like to begin work. May she come down to the mills this afternoon at three o’clock?”
“By all means!” cried McGinnis. “Come.” He tried to say more, but while he was searching for just the right words, the voice murmured, “Thank you”; and then came the click of the receiver against the hook at the other end of the line.
The clock had not struck three that afternoon when Margaret was ushered into the inner office of Spencer & Spencer. Only Frank was there, for which Margaret was thankful. She avoided Ned these days when she could. There was still that haunting reproach in his eyes whenever they met hers.
Frank was expecting her, and only a peculiar tightening of his lips betrayed his disquietude as he turned to his desk and pressed the button that would summon McGinnis to the office.
“Miss Kendall would like to go over one of the mills,” he said quietly, as the young man entered, in response to his ring. “Perhaps you will be her escort.”
Margaret gave her guardian a grateful look as she left the office. She thought she knew just how much the calm acceptance of the situation had cost him, and she appreciated his unflinching determination to give her actions the sanction of his apparent consent. It was for this that she gave him the grateful glance—but he did not see it. His head was turned away.
“And what shall I show you?” asked McGinnis, as the office door closed behind them.
“Everything you can,” returned Margaret; “everything! But particularly the children.”
From the first deafening click-clack of the rattling machines she drew back in consternation.
“They don’t work there—the children!” she cried.
For answer he pointed to a little girl not far away. She was standing on a stool, that she might reach her work. Her face was thin and drawn looking, with deep shadows under her eyes, and little hollows where the roses should have been in her cheeks. Her hair was braided and wound tightly about her small head, though at the temples and behind her ears it kinked into rebelliouscurls that showed what it would like to do if it had a chance. Her ragged little skirts were bound round and round with a stout cord so that the hungry jaws of the machine might not snap at any flying fold or tatter. She did not look up as Margaret paused beside her. She dared not. Her eyes were glued to the whizzing, whirring, clattering thing before her, watching for broken threads or loose ends, the neglect of which might bring down upon her head a snarling reprimand from “de boss” of her department.
Margaret learned many things during the next two hours. Conversation was not easy in the clattering din, but some few things her guide explained, and a word or two spoke volumes sometimes.
She saw what it meant to be a “doffer,” a “reeler,” a “silk-twister.” She saw what it might mean if the tiny hand that thrust the empty bobbin over the buzzing spindle-point should slip or lose its skill. She saw a little maid of twelve who earned two whole dollars a week, and she saw a smaller girl of ten who, McGinnis said, was with her sister the only support of an invalid mother at home. She saw more, much more, until her mindrefused to grasp details and the whole scene became one blurred vision of horror.
Later, after a brief rest—she had insisted upon staying—she saw the “day-shift” swarm out into the chill December night, and the “night-shift” come shivering in to take their places; and she grew faint and sick when she saw among them the scores of puny little forms with tired-looking faces and dragging feet.
“And they’re only beginning!” she moaned, as McGinnis hurried her away. “And they’ve got to work all night—all night!”