Chapter 21

It had been young McGinnis's intention to look up the home and the parents of the little mill-girl, Nellie Magoon, at once, and see if something could not be done to keep�for a time, at least�that frail bit of humanity out of the mills. Some days had elapsed, however, since he had talked with the child, and not until now had he found the time to carry out his plan. He was hurrying with frowning brow along the lower end of Prospect Hill road when suddenly his ears were assailed by the unmistakable evidence that somewhere a mob of small boys had found an object upon which to vent their wildest mischief. The next moment a turn of the road revealed the almost motionless runabout with its living freight of shrieking urchins, and its one white-faced, terrified girl.

With a low-breathed "Margaret!" McGinnis sprang forward.

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 I was frightened. You�you were very good to run away with me," she added, the red deepening in her 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, though that I 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."

"My affairs!"

"Yes. I was fifteen. I deemed somehow that I was the one remaining friend who had your best interests at heart. I couldn't look 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. And the 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 home by 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."