May I speak to you a moment?"

"Of course you may," cried the man, trying to make 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 determination of 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 questioned her. 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, _now_ you 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 away what 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, rising wearily 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."

CHAPTER XXVI

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-gla.s.s, 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 matinee 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." She did 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 a dog that had been painted by a great artist.

She remembered, too, the t.i.tle 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 beyond their 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 not _know_ anything 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 of the 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."