The Turn of the Tide Part 17

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."

CHAPTER XXII

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 G.o.d 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 did _you_ see 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," declared Frank 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!--a _friend_!" 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--