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The Invention Series

CARL AND THE COTTON GIN

by

SARA WARE BASSETT

With Illustrations by William F. Stecher

Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1924

Copyright, 1924,
by Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved

Published September, 1924

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                                      PAGE

    I THE MCGREGORS                                             1

   II CARL TELLS A STORY                                       17

  III A TRAGEDY                                                31

   IV PROBLEMS                                                 45

    V A TANGLE OF SURPRISES                                    60

   VI THE WEB WIDENS                                           71

  VII THE COMING OF THE FAIRY GODMOTHER                        79

 VIII THE ROMANCE OF COTTON                                    97

   IX NORTH AND SOUTH                                         112

    X A LESSON IN THRIFT                                      124

   XI A FAMILY CONGRESS                                       140

  XII A CLUE                                                  160

 XIII HAL REPEATS HIS VISIT                                   180

  XIV SPINNING YARNS                                          193

   XV TIDINGS                                                 219

  XVI A RELUCTANT ALTRUIST                                    228

 XVII AN ORDEAL                                               237

XVIII THE SOLUTION OF MANY MYSTERIES                          250

  XIX UNRAVELING THE SNARLS                                   259

ILLUSTRATIONS

"MR. CARL MCGREGOR," ANNOUNCED HE IN A STENTORIAN
TONE                                                _Frontispiece_

                                                            _Page_

"THE COTTON IS SENT TO FACTORIES TO BE GINNED"        "       129

"BUT THAT ISN'T OUR BASKET, MOTHER," CARL SAID. "THIS
IS MUCH BIGGER"                                               155

"I'VE HUNTED FOR YOU AND YOUR RED CAR EVER SINCE"             253

CARL AND THE COTTON GIN

CHAPTER I

THE McGREGORS

"Carl!"

"Coming, Ma!"

Mrs. McGregor waited a moment.

"But you aren't coming," protested she fretfully. "You never seem to
come when you're wanted. Drat the child! Where is he? Carl!"

"Yes, Ma."

"_Yes, Ma!_ _Yes, Ma!_" the woman mimicked impatiently. "It's easy
enough to shout _Yes, Ma_; but where are you--that's what I want to
know. You're the slowest creature on God's earth, I believe. A tortoise
would be a race horse compared with you. What under the sun are you
doing?"

The boy entered, a good-humored grin on his face.

He was thin, lanky, and blue-eyed, and a rebellious lock of tawny hair
that curled despite all he could do waved back from his forehead. He
might have been fourteen years old or he might have been seventeen; it
was hard to tell whether he was an overgrown younger boy or an
under-sized older one. Whatever his age, however, he could certainly
boast a serene disposition, for his mother's caustic comments failed to
ruffle his temper. Having heard them ever since babyhood he was quite
accustomed to their acid tang; moreover, he had learned to gage them
for what they were worth and class them along with the froth on a soda
or the sputter of a freshly lighted match. The thing underneath was
what mattered and he knew well that beneath the torrent of words his
mother was the best mother on earth, so what more could a boy ask?

Therefore he stood before her, whistling softly and waiting to see what
would happen next. For something surely would happen; it always did
when Mrs. McGregor rolled up her sleeves, and they were rolled up now,
displaying beneath the margin of blue gingham a powerful arm
terminating in a strong hand and slender, capable fingers.

Years ago she had come to Mulberry Court with a large brood of children
and it had been a long time before she could number one friend among
her neighbors. The chief complaint entered against her was that she was
not sociable, and if you were not sociable at Mulberry Court it meant
you were lofty, uppish, considered yourself better than other folks.
What it really meant, however, was that you did not hang out of your
window and chatter to the inhabitant of the opposite tenement; or
loiter in the doorway or on the sidewalk to gossip with the women who
lived on the floors below.

At the outset Mrs. McGregor had let it be understood that she had no
time for gossip and it was this decree that had earned for her the
stigma of not being sociable, the acme of all crimes at Mulberry Court.
Of course she had not proclaimed her policy in so many words. No,
indeed! Yet she might as well have done so for the business-like manner
in which she hastened home from market and shot up the stairs published
her philosophy more forcefully than any words could have done.

"She's just too good for the rest of us," announced Mrs. O'Dowd
sarcastically to the little circle who were wont to await her verdict
on every newcomer to the district. "Proud and snappy and stuck-up, I
call her. Not much of an addition to the house, if you ask my opinion."

This snapshot judgment, hasty as it was, was promptly accepted by the
other women, for was not Julie O'Dowd the social dictator of the
community? Had she ever been known to be wrong? With one accord
Mulberry Court turned its back on the new arrival who so flagrantly
defied the etiquette of the place.

Indeed had not Mrs. O'Dowd's baby fallen ill the seal of disapproval
put on Mrs. McGregor might have rested on her all her days, and she and
her entire family been completely ostracized by the neighborhood. But
little Joey O'Dowd, the youngest of Julie's flock, was seized with
pneumonia, and although the flock was a large one Julie was too genuine
a mother to feel she could spare one out of her fold. Was not Joey the
littlest of all, the pet of her household? All the motherhood in her
revolted at the thought of losing him. Strangely enough until the
present moment she had escaped great crises with her children. She was
well schooled in the ways of whooping cough, measles, and chicken pox
and could do up a cut finger with almost professional skill; but in the
face of crucial illness she was like a warrior without weapons.

Overwhelmed with terror, therefore, by the immediate calamity, she did
in benumbed fashion everything the doctor directed and still Joey was
no better; if anything he grew steadily worse. Motionless he lay in his
crib, his great staring eyes giving forth no flicker of recognition.
There was not much hope, the neighbors whispered, after they had
tiptoed in to look at him and tiptoed out again. He was as good as
gone. Julie could never save him in the world.

The whispers, humanely muffled, did not reach the panic-stricken mother
but she was not blind to the despairing head-shaking and these suddenly
awakened her to the realization that according to general opinion the
battle she was waging was a losing one. It was a terrible discovery.
What should she do? She must do something. Wild-eyed she plunged into
the hall, a vague impulse to seek help moving her; and it was just as
she paused irresolute at the head of the stairs that she came face to
face with Mrs. McGregor ascending to her fifth-floor flat.

Now Mrs. McGregor was a born nurse, whose skill had been increased by
constant practice. With a wisdom that amounted almost to genius she had
brought her large family through many an appalling conflict and emerged
victorious. Sickness, therefore, had no terrors for her. Instantly the
mother in her read and interpreted the desperation in Julie's face and
without a word she slipped through the open door into the room where
Joey lay. One glance of her experienced eye showed that there was
plenty to be done. The interior was close and untidy, for Mrs. O'Dowd
in her distraction had cast aside every consideration but her baby.

Mrs. McGregor stooped down over the crib.

What she saw there or did not see she at least kept to herself, and
when she straightened up it was to meet the searching gaze of her
neighbor with a grave smile.

"He's going to die," moaned Julie, wringing her hands. "He is going to
die--my baby--and I can't help it!"

Although for a long time the two women had lived beneath the same roof,
these were the first words Mrs. O'Dowd had ever addressed to Mrs.
McGregor.

"Might I touch him?" the latter inquired gently.

Like a suspicious animal Julie stiffened jealously.

"I'll not hurt him," Mrs. McGregor hastened to say, not taking offense
at the other's attitude. "I just want to raise him up so he can breathe
better." Then she added reassuringly, "I'd not give up if I were you.
You must keep on fighting to the very last minute. There is much we can
do yet to make him comfortable."

"What?"

"We can bathe him a little for one thing, if you would heat some
water."

Dumbly Julie turned to obey.

"I've a big family of my own," went on Mrs. McGregor in matter-of-fact
fashion, "and I've seen so many children pull through when they looked
fit to die that I've learned never to quit hoping. You'll get nowhere
in a fight if you haven't courage."

"I had courage enough at first," whispered the baby's mother in a
shaking voice, "but I've lost my nerve now. I'm frightened--and--and
tired."

Tears came into her eyes.

"Of course you are," came with quick sympathy from Mrs. McGregor. "We
all are apt to lose our nerve when we are worn out. I don't wonder
you're tired. You've had no sleep day or night, I'll be bound."

"Not much. The neighbors were kind about offering but somehow I
couldn't leave Joey with 'em. Besides, how can you sleep when you are
worried half out of your mind?"

"I know! I know!" nodded the other woman. "Still you can't go on
forever without rest. Next you know you will be down sick yourself and
then where will your baby be--to say nothing of your other children. A
mother has got to think ahead. Now listen. Would you trust me to watch
the baby while you curled up on the sofa and got a wink or two of
sleep? I'll promise to call you should there be an atom of change. Do
now! Be a sensible woman. And how would you feel about my giving the
little chap a drop of medicine? A Scotch doctor in the old country once
gave me a prescription that I've tried on both Timmie and Martin and it
did 'em worlds of good at a time just like this. It might do nothing
for your child, mind. I'm not promising it would. Still, it couldn't
hurt him and it might cure."

Julie's dulled mind caught the final word. _Cure!_ Alas, she had given
up hope that anything in the world could do that. The reaction that
came with the suggestion was so wonderful that it left her speechless.

"Now see here," burst out Mrs. McGregor misinterpreting her silence,
"use your common sense. Do I look as if I had come to poison your baby?
Why, woman, I love children better than anything on earth. They're a
precious lot of bother, there's no denying, and sometimes I get that
impatient with one or the other of 'em I could toss him out the window.
But for all their hectoring, and their noise, and their dirt--their
meddling, and smashing, and mending, I'd not be without them."

While speaking she had been touching the baby with a hand so yearning
and tender that it could not be stayed. She had raised his head,
smoothed his pillow, straightened the coverings that lay over him. It
was amazing how quietly and deftly her hands moved. Even the child
seemed conscious of her healing presence, for all of a sudden his wee
fingers curled about one of hers and he smiled faintly.

"See!" exclaimed Mrs. McGregor, "the baby is not afraid to trust me."

"Nor am I any longer," put in Julie with eager surrender. "Do as you
like with Joey. You know better than I."

"Oh, it isn't that," the visitor protested, rising. "It is just that
it's sometimes well not to leave a stone unturned. You might regret not
having taken the chance. I'll slip upstairs and get the medicine. It
won't take a minute."

"If you'll be that kind."

The Scotchwoman needed no second bidding. She was gone and back again
in a twinkling, the magic green bottle in her hand.

"Now if I might have a cup of hot water," said she. "I've a dropper
here. We'll see what a spoonful of this mixture will do for the wee
laddie. What is his name?"

"Joey."

Mrs. O'Dowd's eyes had brightened and they now beamed on her neighbor.

"It's a nice name," replied Mrs. McGregor, beaming in turn. "I always
liked the name of Joseph. Well, Joey boy, we'll see if we can make you
well. Here, little fellow!"

Gently she forced the liquid between the baby's lips.

"Now we'll sponge him a bit, put on a fresh slip, and give him some
air!"

"But won't he----"

"Catch cold? Not if he is shielded from the draught. He'll like the air
and feel the better for it. It will help him to breathe."

Noiselessly she went to work and within an hour both Joey and his
surroundings took on a different aspect.

"Now," said she to the grateful mother, "you roll up in that comforter
and take a nap. Don't worry about the baby. I'll be right here. Will
you trust me?"

Julie hesitated.

"It's not that I won't trust you," murmured she. "But you're so
heavenly kind. Not another soul has done for me what you have and I'm a
hundred times better acquainted with 'em, too. Of course I know they
have all they can do without taking on the cares of others. I'm not
blaming them. You yourself can't have much time to spare. Haven't you
other things to do?"

"Of course I have," came with curt honesty from Mrs. McGregor. "I've
six children and they leave me little time for idling. But when I do
take time away from 'em, I plan to take it to some purpose. Just now I
have nothing more important to do than nurse this baby. It's my first
job. So don't be worrying about my work. Luckily it is Saturday and
Mary, Carl, and Timmie will look after the little tots and get the
dinner. I told 'em to when I was there just now. Martin and Nell seldom
give any trouble, and should James Frederick wake up, one of the boys
is to run down and tell me."

Julie placed a hand impulsively on that of the other woman.

"I can never thank you," murmured she brokenly.

"Oh, don't be talking of thanks," Mrs. McGregor interrupted, cutting
her short. "My dosing may do no good and before the day is out you may
be calling me a meddlesome old harridan. Wait and see what happens. I'm
not one that sets much store by thanks, anyhow. After all, what does it
amount to but a string of words? If we can cure the baby it will be all
the thanks I want."

If the sentiment the final phrase so modestly expressed was genuine
Mrs. McGregor at least received the boon she craved, for as if by magic
the baby began to mend that very night and before the week passed was
out of danger and on the high road to recovery. Julie's gratitude was
touching to see.

"'Twas Mrs. McGregor saved Joey," declared she to every person she met.
"She's as good as any doctor--better, for Joey might have died but for
her. Should I go through life kneeling to her on my bended knees I
never could thank her enough."

Julie O'Dowd did not go through life, however, kneeling before Mrs.
McGregor on her bended knees; but she did a more practical and
efficacious thing. Everywhere she went she sounded the praise of her
neighbor; talked of her kindness, her wisdom, her unselfishness, until
not only Mulberry Court, but the area adjoining it began to view the
gaunt, austere figure from quite a different angle. Shyly the women
began to nod a greeting to the stranger.

"It's just her way to be curt and quick," explained they to one
another. "She doesn't mean a thing in the world by it. Julie says she's
sharp and prickly as a chestnut burr, but with the sweetest of hearts
inside."

Indeed it was not long before Mrs. McGregor proved her right to this
generous summary of her character. Other neighbors gained courage to
consult her about their children and in time about their troubles in
general.

"Ask Mrs. McGregor," became the slogan of Mulberry Court. "She'll
know."

And she unfailingly did. She it was who prescribed medicines; gave
advice; suggested plain, common-sense remedies for every variety of
dilemma. Nevertheless she wasted no words about it. She had no time to
fool away, she let it be known. Whatever she did had to be done with
pitiless directness. Often her council was delivered through a crack in
the door or even given through the door itself; and there were
instances when it was shouted through the keyhole. But no matter where
the words came from they were always helpful and friendly and the
neighbors came to understand the manner accompanying them and did not
resent it.

Her children understood it too. Mary, Carl, Timmie, Martin,
four-year-old Nell, and even wee James Frederick (whom Mrs. McGregor
unfailingly addressed by his full name) all understood and worshipped
their quick-tongued mother. Together with the rest of Mulberry Court
they also had supreme faith in whatever she did and said, and were
certain that every calamity under the sun could be set right if only
she were consulted and her advice followed.

And yet loyal as they were, there was one point on which neither Carl
nor Mary agreed with their mother. Of course she was right--she must be
right; wasn't she always so? Yet notwithstanding this belief they could
not but feel that it would be a far better arrangement for them to
leave school and go into the cotton mills where their father had worked
for so many years. Ever so many of the boys and girls they knew worked
there. Why should they remain in the High School struggling with
algebra, geometry, history, Latin, English and bookkeeping when they
might be earning money? It seemed senseless. Certainly the family
needed money badly enough. Were there not always endless pairs of shoes
to be bought? Caps, mittens, suits, stockings, and underclothing to
purchase; not to mention food and groceries? And then there was the
rent.

Ah, Mary and Carl knew very well about the rent, the bills, and all the
other worrisome things. Even Timmie, who was only nine, knew about
them; and once Martin, aged six, had startled his elders by proclaiming
on a sunny May morning, "This is rent day, isn't it, Ma?" in a tone of
awe, as if the date marked some gruesome ceremony.

You came to understand about rent day when toward the end of the month
there were no pennies to be had, and you were forced to wait for the
shoes or rubbers you needed.

That rent day was a milestone to be dreaded even Nell vaguely guessed
and when it had passed in safety all the McGregors, both big and
little, joined in a general rejoicing.

Ma was the magician who accomplished that happy miracle. Ma always
contrived to accomplish everything, so of course she managed rent day
along with the rest of the wonders she performed. She made no secret,
either, of how she did it. She sewed! Yes, she sewed for a dressmaker
who sent her marvelous dresses to embroider. For Ma was very clever
with her needle and right out of the blue sky could make the most
beautiful flowers and figures with colored silks. She could also do
beading and she was teaching Mary how to do it. Already Mary could do
quite nice embroidery and exquisite plain sewing.

Ma was very proud of this.

But what Mary did chiefly when she was not at school was to help with
the housework so her mother would be free to sew. That was the
important thing. Ma must not roughen her hands or the silks she worked
with would be spoiled. So Mary cooked and scrubbed like a real little
housewife; took care of the younger children and kept them quiet so
they would not interrupt their mother.

And between school hours Carl and Tim helped also. They built the
fires, wiped the dishes, ran errands, and brought home any bits of
discarded wood they found in the streets. In fact, there was not one
drone in the McGregor hive. Even James Frederick had learned to lie in
his crib and play by himself when everybody was busy.

It was a happy family, the McGregors. Its members, it is true, did not
have everything they wanted. They never expected that. Those who had
mittens lacked new caps, and those who had caps were often forced to
wear patched shoes and made-over stockings. Martin's reefer frequently
did duty for Nell, and Mrs. McGregor's cape for Mary. However, all that
did not matter. They were happy and that was the chief thing, happy in
spite of patched clothing, coats that were outgrown, rubbers that were
either sizes too small or dropped off at every step, and shoes that
were common property. The little flat was sometimes hot in summer and
cold in winter but it took more than that to dampen the McGregors'
spirits.

When they had lentil soup, how steaming and delicious it was! When meat
stew, what a dish for the gods! And who could have asked for a greater
treat than a thick slice of Mary's fresh bread coated over with
molasses or peanut butter?

Every month a long blue envelope containing a check from Uncle
Frederick arrived and that, together with what Mary and her mother
earned, kept the household going. But they seldom saw Uncle James
Frederick Dillingham. He was always sailing to India, China, or South
America. Sometimes letters came from him and picture postcards showing
strange countries and people in foreign dress. But the check never
failed to make its appearance and as it was highly important that it
should, everybody agreed that since Uncle Frederick could not come
himself he was almost as satisfactorily represented by this magic bit
of blue paper. The check brought things and perhaps if Uncle Frederick
himself had come he wouldn't. You could not tell about uncles you had
never seen.

In the meantime the blue paper kept stew in the kettle and the shelter
of Mulberry Court above their heads, and what better service could an
uncle render his relatives?

Hence Uncle Frederick's name came to be mentioned constantly in the
household.

"Remember, Timmie, those are your Uncle Frederick Dillingham's rubber
boots and be thankful to him for them," the boy's mother would observe
when she brought home the purchase. Or "Uncle Frederick is presenting
you with those stockings, Carl. See you don't forget it."

And the children did not forget. Gradually their unknown uncle came to
assume in their imagination a form that would have surprised him had he
been suddenly confronted by it. It was that of a benevolent-faced fairy
clad in robes of purple and ermine, and wearing on his head a crown
resplendent with gems of myriad colors. In his hand he carried a
scepter terminating in a star that far outshone the jewels he wore, a
scepter all powerful to work miracles. He was the good angel of the
McGregor home, the Aladdin to whom they owed all sorts of blessings.

And yet withal Uncle James Frederick Dillingham was one and the same
person who sailed the _Charlotte_ to India, China, South America, or
some other ephemeral port. How paradoxical was this dual rôle, how
alluring and how ridiculous!

CHAPTER II

CARL TELLS A STORY

It was April. Already spring was in the air. The grass in the parks was
turning green, forsythia bloomed golden, and boys were playing marbles
on the streets and sidewalks. Even Mulberry Court, shut in as it was,
felt the impulse of the awakening season. The landlord came, looked
over the premises, and after viewing the general shabbiness became
reckless enough to order a broken windowpane to be reset, some of the
tumble-down ceilings to be repaired, and the fire escapes and window
frames to be repainted.

Painting at Mulberry Court was a terrible ordeal. As there was not an
inch of the place that was not crowded to the limit of its capacity,
painting meant that milk bottles, improvised ice chests, and woodpiles
must be put somewhere else; and where that somewhere could be was an
enigma. Furthermore, to add to this difficulty there were the
children--dozens of them tumbling over one another and surging in and
out the doors, a fact that rendered painting a precarious undertaking.
Youthful investigators examined the moist pigment; chubby fingers drew
hieroglyphics in it; while the less curious forgot it altogether and
carried away on their garments imprints of vermilion and black that
transformed their otherwise dingy garments into robes of oriental
splendor.

Carl McGregor was no exception to the rule for wherever calamity lurked
he was sure to be in its vicinity.

"I'd know you'd never rest until you got a patch of red paint on
yourself," announced his mother, surveying him as he started toward the
door. "As, if buying you sweaters ain't enough without your leaning
plumb up against the fire escape and stamping a whole decalcomania of
red stripes on your back like as if you were a convict."

"Is there paint on me, Ma?"

"Is there? I suppose you had no notion of it."

"I hadn't--honest Injun."

"Well, aside from the fact that you're barred up and down neat as if
the lines were ruled there's nothing the matter with you," returned his
mother with a faint smile.

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry, Ma. Truly I am."

"Sorry? I'll be bound you are. You are always a bundle of regrets when
it is too late to help anything. However, you need weep no tears for
that sweater needed washing anyway. You're that rough on your clothes
that none of 'em keep clean more than a minute. I'll get some gasoline
and soak it out in the shed and it will be like new. Peel it off and
give it to me."

"I'm sorry, Ma," the boy repeated.

"It's no great matter, sonny. Children must be children. I'm past
expecting them to be grown-ups," his mother said kindly. "If you hadn't
been getting into the paint you most likely would have been getting
into something else. You have a genius for such mishaps. I'm glad it
was no worse."

Reassured, Carl grinned.

"I do seem to have a good many--" he hesitated, then added,
"misfortunes."

"Misfortunes, do you call 'em? Sure that's a pretty polite word to
apply to the things that manage to happen to you," sniffed Mrs.
McGregor. "I suppose it was a misfortune when you tumbled underneath
the watering cart; and a misfortune when you sat down in the wet tar! A
misfortune when you sent the snowball through the schoolroom window; to
say nothing of the creamcake you treated Jakie Sullivan to that
well-nigh killed him."

"I didn't know the creamcake was going to make him sick."

"No; 'twas just your misfortune. You seem to attract adventures like
that. Why, if I was to let you go into the cotton mills as you are
always begging to do you'd have every machine there out of order in
less than a week and yourself hashed up into little pieces into the
bargain."

She had touched upon an unlucky subject for instantly, with flaming
face, the lad confronted her.

"No, I wouldn't. I wish you would let me go into the mills, Ma. You
might let me try it. Ever so many boys no older than I are working
there and earning oodles of money. If we had more money we could----"

"We could be having an automobile, no doubt, and going to Palm Beach
winters," was the grim response. "Well, Palm Beach or not, you're not
going into any mill so long as we can keep body and soul together
without your doing it. You are going to get an education--you and Mary
too--if it costs me my life. I'm not going to have you grow up knowing
nothing and being nothing. Some day you'll see I was right and thank me
for it."

"I thank you now, Ma," declared Carl soberly. "But that doesn't make me
relish Latin and history any better."

"No matter if it doesn't. What you like is of no consequence," Mrs.
McGregor announced, with a majestic sweep of her hand. "The chief thing
is that you exercise your mind and learn how to use it. The Latin
itself amounts to nothing. It is like boxing gloves or a punching bag,
a thing that serves its turn to limber up your brain. It is learning to
think that counts."

Carl's face brightened.

"The teacher was saying something like that just the other day,"
asserted he eagerly. "He was telling us about some of the people who
had done great things in the world and explaining how long and how hard
they had to work at them. The inventors, for instance, had to think and
think about the things they invented. It didn't just come to them all
in a minute as I used to believe it did."

Although his mother did not look up from her sewing she nodded
encouragingly.

"There was Eli Whitney," continued Carl, coming nearer. "I remembered
about him because of the mills here. He invented the cotton gin, you
know. Mr. Kimball told us that Whitney went through Yale and then
started down South to be a tutor in somebody's family without any idea
of ever being an inventor. But when he got to where he was going the
people who had hired him had changed their minds and found somebody
else and poor Eli Whitney was out of a job."

"A shabby trick!"

"Yes. Still, it was lucky for him, just the same," responded Carl,
"because on the way down he had met the widow of General Greene and she
was sorry for him and asked him to her house. He'd just been vaccinated
because there was lots of smallpox in the South and he was feeling
rotten. You know how sore your arm gets and how sick you are sometimes.
Remember Martin? Well, anyhow, Mrs. Greene either knew what it meant to
be vaccinated or else she was kind of ashamed of the way her part of
the country had treated Eli Whitney. Or maybe she was just kind-hearted
like you. Anyhow she invited Mr. Whitney to come to Savannah when she
saw how mean he felt and the fit he threw at finding himself so far
from home without money or a job."

"Carl!"

"Well, wouldn't you have thrown a fit? I think Mrs. Greene was a
peach," went on Carl, passing serenely over the reproof. "She was
mighty kind to take a stranger into her house when he had no friends."

"Certainly."

"By this time Mr. Whitney had decided to be a lawyer and while he was
making his home at Mrs. Greene's he began to read all the law books he
could lay hands on. Then one day Mrs. Greene busted her embroidery
frame----"

"Did _what_?"

"Oh, you know, Ma," fretted Carl, at being interrupted. "She smashed
the thing and----"

"What had that to do with it?"

"Everything; because, you see, Eli Whitney mended it so nicely that
Mrs. Greene was pleased into the ground and thought he was the smartest
person ever. His father had had a shop at home where as a boy he had
learned to use tools. But of course Mrs. Greene didn't know that. All
she knew was that he made a corking job of her embroidery frame and so
one day when some Georgia gentlemen were there at dinner and were
telling how hard it was to get the seeds out of cotton she up and said,
'You should ask Mr. Whitney how to do it; he can do anything,' and to
prove it she toted out her embroidery frame to show them."

"Did _what_?"

"Oh, say, Ma, don't keep bothering me when I'm trying to tell you a
story," Carl complained peevishly. "You know what I mean well enough."

"Much as ever," was the grim reply.

The lad grinned.

"Well, anyhow, the Georgia cotton men talked to Eli Whitney, explaining
how the cotton stuck to the seeds and got all broken to bits when you
tried to get them out; and how it took nearly a whole day to separate a
pound of cotton fiber from the seeds. And then the cotton planters went
on to tell how there was lots and lots of land in the South where you
couldn't raise rice but could raise cotton if it wasn't such a chore--"
(a warning glance from his mother caused Carl hastily to amend the
phrase) "such a piece of work to get the seeds out. Eli Whitney
listened to their talk and after the men had gone he thought he'd try
to make some sort of a machine that would clear cotton of the seeds."

"And did he?"

"You betcha! I mean, yes, he did. Whitney was no boob." (This time Mrs.
McGregor failed to protest; perhaps she decided it was useless.) "He
had, as I told you, made wheels and canes and knives and nails in his
father's workshop at home. He had even made a violin. So he wasn't at
all fussed about trying to make a cotton gin. I guess he had a hunch he
could do it."

"A _what_?" gasped Mrs. McGregor involuntarily.

"A hunch means he knew he could turn the trick."

The mother shook her head ruefully.

"And me almost killing myself to give you an education!" she ejaculated
beneath her breath.

"Well, anyway, Ma, slang or no slang, I'd be telling you nothing at all
about Eli Whitney if I hadn't gone to school, so cheer up," asserted
Carl impishly.

He heard his mother laugh. Mrs. McGregor had the good old Scotch sense
of humor and when her flashing smile came it was always a delight to
the beholder.

"You're a good boy, Carl, if you do speak the language of an orang-outang,"
she answered. "Where you pick up such a dialect I cannot imagine."

"Oh, it's easy enough to pick it up, Ma. The stunt is not to. Why, what
I've been saying just now is nothing to what I could say if I let
myself go. I've been holding in because of you. I could have had you so
locoed you couldn't have understood a thing I meant if I hadn't
been--been considerate. But I know you don't like slang so I try to cut
it out. You may not believe it but I do try--honest, I do."

"I believe you, laddie," returned his mother kindly. "It's hard, I
know, with all the other boys talking like barbarians. Now go on about
Mr. Whitney. Did he contrive to make the machine the Georgia gentlemen
wanted?"

"Yes, siree!" continued Carl with enthusiasm. "Mrs. Greene gave him a
room to work in down in the basement of her house and he set right
about the job. Unluckily he had never seen any cotton growing because
he had always lived in the North, you know. In fact, he had never laid
eyes on cotton at all until it was made into cloth, so of course he
hadn't much of an idea what he was up against, and the first thing he
had to do was to scurry round and get specimens of cotton with the
seeds in it. It wasn't so easy to do just then, either, because it was
not the season for cotton-gathering and he had to hunt and hunt to get
some of the last season's crop. I believe he finally got what he needed
from a warehouse in New Orleans. Anyhow, he got the cotton pods
somewhere and found out better where he stood. And that reminds me, Ma,
that the teacher told us there were ever so many different kinds of
cotton; and that the Upland cotton, growing in the South, had green
seeds that stuck like--like _anything_ to the white part. You could
hardly separate the two without ruining the cotton fibers and you can
see that as they were to be spun they must not be broken."

"Mr. Whitney did have a puzzle to work out."

"You've said it, Ma! He sure had," beamed Carl. "Well, he kept fussing
round, and fussing round, and by and by he managed to get together a
simple sort of contrivance that would do what he wanted it to. It was
no great shakes of a machine. Any blacksmith or wheelwright could have
made it if he had happened to think of it first. In fact, lots of other
people did make gins like it. That is why Whitney never got rich, the
teacher said."

"But didn't he get his invention patented?" inquired Mrs. McGregor,
laying aside the tulle she was beading.

"Not until it was too late. You see, Mrs. Greene was so set up to think
Mr. Whitney had done the deed she had predicted he would that she had
to go blabbing all over town how clever he was. And the minute people
heard that a cotton gin was really made that would take out the seeds
they came begging to see the wonderful machine and find out how it
worked; and of course Mr. Whitney had to show it off. He hadn't a
notion people would be so low-down as to snitch his idea and go to
making cotton gins of their own. But that's exactly what they did do
and as soon as Mr. Whitney and Mr. Miller who was helping him got wise
to the fact, they locked the new cotton gin up. But do you s'pose that
did any good? Not on your life! The cotton raisers were crazy to get
the machine because everybody needed it so badly. On the plantations
there wasn't enough work to keep the negro slaves busy and it cost a
lot to feed them. The planters figured that if something profitable
could be found for them to do they would earn their keep. They
certainly could not do this picking the seeds out of cotton because it
took them such an age to pick enough to make a pound. The darkies could
gather the crop all right. It had to be gathered by hand. What was
needed was something that would take the seeds out and make it possible
to raise and sell big quantities of cotton. So Whitney's gin exactly
filled the bill. It was just what the whole South had been waiting for
and if such a thing existed people were bound to have it. Naturally
when Whitney wouldn't show it to them and locked it up, they thought he
was almighty stingy and some of the meanest of the bunch broke into the
place where he kept it and carried it off."

"Oh!"

"Rotten, wasn't it? They ought to have been hung; but they weren't.
Instead, the model of the cotton gin got abroad and all the South
started to making cotton gins until they were all over the place."

"I'm afraid Mr. Whitney wasn't a very business-like man," ventured Mrs.
McGregor.

"He wasn't. Most generally inventors aren't, I guess. Still, how was he
to know they were going to swipe his idea? Of course he and Mr. Miller
went straight to work and tried to pick up the pieces. Mr. Whitney went
home to New Haven and set about making cotton gins on a larger scale
than he could make them at Mrs. Greene's; but even then he could not
make them fast enough. And on top of all his factory burned down and
for a while he couldn't make any gins at all. It seemed as if hard luck
pursued him whichever way he turned."

"It certainly did seem so!"

"He and Mr. Miller, who had now gone in as his partner, spent no end of
money in lawsuits, and Mr. Miller got so worn out and discouraged
fighting the infringers that finally he died, leaving Eli Whitney to
carry on the battle alone. And it was a battle, too, to get any
satisfaction out of the people who were making use of his idea. I
believe that North Carolina and Tennessee did pay him something, and
after a while South Carolina and Georgia did. In all he received about
ninety thousand dollars; but the lawsuits he had been compelled to go
through to get it ate up a good slice of the receipts. Besides, some
more had to go for the factory that got burned and other expenses. So
he didn't get much out of the deal, I guess. But the South did. The
Whitney gin whooped up their cotton trade in great style. Every year
the planters grew more and more cotton because now that they could get
the seeds out it paid to raise it, and by and by they were exporting
millions of bales. Cotton is now one of our biggest exports, the
teacher said. We grow billions of pounds of it and for the most part it
is the green seed, Upland cotton, cleaned by a gin founded on Whitney's
idea. That's why I say it does you no good to go to school," concluded
Carl. "Whitney went through Yale college and invented his cotton gin
before he had been out of the university a year, and what good did it
do him, I'd like to know?"

"He did a lot to help the world along, sonny."

"Oh, I suppose he did," admitted the boy. "But for all that he didn't
get the spondulics. That is why I want to go into the factory. So I can
get some cash to help out here at home. S'pos'n we didn't have Uncle
Frederick Dillingham or your sewing money? And anyhow, I don't want you
to be always sewing. I want you to have pretty clothes, ride round in
an automobile, and be a lady!"

"Oh, Carlie! Can't one work for a living and still be a lady, my dear?"

Carl flushed.

"Of course she can, Ma. You're a lady right now. Still, I do wish you
didn't have to make those silly dresses all the time. Well, no matter.
You just wait until I get through school. You shall be wearing dresses
like those and somebody else shall be sewing the beads on."

A suspicious moisture gathered in Mrs. McGregor's eyes.

"You're a good boy, Carl," answered she gently, "even if you do
slaughter your mother tongue. Now be off with you. All this palaver
about Mr. Whitney has almost made you late for school, and left me
hardly knowing whether I am sewing frontwards or backwards. Still, it
isn't a bad thing to have a son that knows something."

It was evident from Mrs. McGregor's tone that she might have said more
but for the stern belief that she must not flatter her children.
Therefore to cut short the danger of such a crime she brusquely hurried
Carl out of the kitchen, merely calling after him:

"Don't forget to bring home a yeast cake to-night or you'll get no
bread to-morrow. Put your mind on it, now. If you remembered the
errands I ask you to do half as well as you remember about cotton gins
and the like you'd save layers of shoe leather."

It was a characteristic farewell. Mrs. McGregor would not have been
Mrs. McGregor had she not uttered it. All this Carl understood and,
undaunted by the words, he bent to kiss his mother on the cheek.

"I suppose you wouldn't have time to stop into the Harlings on your
way," suggested she, with a twinkle in her eye.

"I was planning to stop there a minute as I went along."

"I'll be bound you were. One might as well try to keep a fly out of the
molasses as to keep you away from the Harlings. Well, since you are
going that way anyhow, you can carry over a bowl of broth. I made it
yesterday a-purpose. Tell Mrs. Harling it will only need to be heated
up for herself and Grandfather Harling."

A TRAGEDY

It was in the corner block beyond Mulberry Court that the Harlings
lived, and had you asked Carl McGregor or his chum Jack Sullivan who
Hal Harling was you would have received in return for your ignorance a
withering stare, a sigh of pity, or possibly no reply at all. Any one
who did not know Hal Harling was either to be scorned or condoled with,
as the case might be. Yet each boy would have found it difficult to put
into words who and what this distinguished personage really was.

Hal Harling was the embryo political boss of the district; the leader
of the gang; the hero of every boy who lived within a radius of half a
mile of the dingy flat on Broad Street. He was a tall, jovial-faced,
thick-set fellow with the physique of a prize fighter and such an
abundance of careless good humor that it bubbled contagiously from his
round blue eyes and smiling lips. One would have said he was the last
person in the world to take offence and indeed on first glance one
might safely have made the assertion. But with this gay, happy-go-lucky
disposition went a highly developed desire for fair play which at times
suddenly converted the balmy, easy-going young autocrat into an enemy
pitiless and terrible.

Let some brute stone a kitten; torment a boy smaller than himself;
snatch an apple from the stall of the old woman at the corner and, with
a justice whose speed was incredible, Hal Harding descended upon the
miscreant and pommeled into him a lesson in squareness that he did not
soon if forget.

The fact that the youthful avenger was usually on the right side
increased, if anything, the number of street brawls he was mixed up in,
for alas, Mulberry Court and all the outlying vicinity teemed with so
great a multitude of injustices that he who set himself to straighten
them out found ample provocation for continual blows. As he trod the
narrow streets and alleys this champion of the weak encountered one
challenge after another with the result that it was a common sight in
the neighborhood to see Hal Harling the center of an angry scuffle.

Partisanship was instant. A passer-by did not need to investigate the
broil. Ten cases out of eleven the victim of the squabble was getting
what was coming to him, in popular opinion.

"Hal Harling was giving it to him good and plenty," a sympathetic
observer would afterward relate. "I don't know what the fuss was about
but I didn't interfere for I'll wager Hal was right; he usually is."

Around the standard of such a personality it was inevitable that the
inhabitants of the community, especially the male ones, should rally;
and foremost in the ranks of admiring worshippers were Jack Sullivan
and Carl McGregor, either one of whom would willingly have rolled up
his own sleeves in defense of his idol. They tagged at his heels, ran
his errands, and walked on air whenever they won his commendation. If
he called them down it was as if they had been rolled in the dust.

And yet despite the incense burned at his shrine Hal Harling kept a
level head and an estimate of himself that was appealingly modest. In
fact he was a very human boy with the same love of pranks and mischief
that delighted other boys. He loved a joke dearly. It was fun, for
example, to let an orange down on a string and dangle it before little
Katie Callahan's window and then jerk it back out of Katie's reach when
she snatched for it. Or it amused him to drop peppermint balls through
the Murphy's letter box and hear the children inside the room chase
them as they rolled about the floor. Later he saw to it that Katie got
the orange and the Murphy youngsters the candy. All his jokes were like
that, their playful hectoring ending in kindness. He was too
kind-hearted to enjoy causing pain.

What wonder that such a hero had his satellites?

On the other hand, he had his enemies too--scores of them--for a
justice dealer is never without opponents. As a rule these persons were
the victims of his various avalanches of wrath, those to whom at one
time or another he had meted out punishment and denounced as cowards.
For the disapproval of these cravens Hal Harling did not care a button.
He much preferred they should be numbered among his enemies rather than
his friends and he said so frankly. Nevertheless, his mother, timid by
nature and of a peace-loving disposition, shook her head.

"You can't afford, Hal, to antagonize folks the way you do," she would
protest. "The time may come when you'll be sorry."

For answer the giant would shrug his shoulders.

"I'm not afraid of anybody," he would reply proudly.

The statement was not made in a spirit of bravado; rather it reflected
the self-respect of one consciously in the right.

"But you to be more careful. Such people are capable of working you
harm."

"Let them try."

"But they are. They can do all sorts of underhanded things you would
not descend to," whimpered Mrs. Harling. "It worries me all the time to
see you so regardless."

"There, there, Mother! Quit fussing about me," pleaded the big fellow
kindly. "I'm all right and can look after myself."

"I know you can when the fight is a fair one," agreed his mother. "But
you never can tell what weapon a coward will use."

Hal laughed contemptuously and, realizing that her counsel had failed
of its aim, Mrs. Harling said no more.

Up to the present the calamities she periodically predicted had not
occurred and as those who loved her son rallied round him with
ever-increasing loyalty, and those who disliked him kept their
distance, she gradually ceased to protest. What was the use of wasting
her strength on conditions she could not help? Poor soul! She needed
every atom of energy she possessed to meet the trials that beset her
own path.

For Mrs. Harling was a helpless invalid and together with her bedridden
father lived day after day imprisoned in the small tenement overlooking
the rushing, hurrying world of which she was no part. Each morning
Louise, Hal's younger sister, made tidy the house, packed up a
luncheon, and the two started for Davis and Coulter's spinning mills
where all day they helped to operate the busy machinery. It was a
noisy, monotonous occupation; a stretch of dull, wearisome hours, and
frequently the boy and girl were so tired at night they had scarcely
energy to move. And yet they toiled at the humdrum task gratefully,
rejoicing in their wages which not only kept body and soul together but
provided for the feeble mother and the aged grandfather.

The past winter had been a hard one in Baileyville, the manufacturing
village where they lived. Most of the mills were running on half time
and many of the employés had been turned away for lack of work. In
consequence worry and uncertainty hung over everybody. Who would be the
next to go, they speculated. One never could predict where the axe
would fall, or be sure he might not be the victim elected to meet its
merciless stroke.

Thus far both Hal and Louise had been retained at their posts; but the
fear that some of the older operatives who had been longer in the
employ of the company might take precedence over them constantly
menaced their peace of mind.

Corcoran, the foreman under whom they worked, was a harsh, unreasonable
bully who rather enjoyed his post as executioner, authority having
exaggerated in him all the meannesses that lurked in his small,
vindictive nature. Only the week before, Hal, enraged by his
discourtesy and injustice to one of the women, had blurted out to his
face a rebuke for his roughness. It was, to be sure, an unwise act and
one that not only did the poor girl whose cause he championed little
good but jeopardized his own position; yet to save his soul he could
not have checked his indignation.

"You shouldn't have said it," declared Louise, who had been an
eyewitness of the encounter. "Of course I was proud of you as could be;
and you said nothing but what Corcoran deserved. Still it isn't safe to
do that sort of thing. It may lose you your job."

"I don't care if it does," returned Hal, whose rage had not yet cooled.
"Corcoran may fire me if he wants to. But he isn't going to bully any
girl as he bullied Susie Mayo--not when I'm round."

"But don't you see, dear; we can't afford to lose our jobs," continued
his sister gently. "Too much depends on our keeping them. We must have
the money."

"I'm not worrying," laughed Hal with confidence. "If Corcoran should
give me the sack I could get another place without any trouble, I'll
bet I could."

"Places are not so easy to find," asserted the more prudent Louise.
"There are lots of men in Baileyville who have been out of work for
months. You ought not to be in such a hurry to rush into a quarrel,
Hal."

"I was right; you say so yourself."

"Yes, perhaps so. Still----"

"Don't you think somebody ought to have called Corcoran down?"

"Of course he was unfair and--and rude."

"Rude!" interrupted her brother scornfully, "he was contemptible,
outrageous!"

"I know it. But----"

"If fewer people stood for brutes there would be fewer brutes in the
world."

"It isn't our business to round Corcoran up."

"It is my business to stop any man who is impolite to a woman," replied
Hal. "Besides, Corcoran knew well enough he was wrong. You notice he
did not put up any defense. He just walked off and has never mentioned
the affair since."

"That is what frightens me."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm afraid he isn't through."

"Nonsense! He's through all right. He hasn't uttered a yip and it is
now over two weeks ago that the thing happened. Quit your worrying,
kiddie. There'll be no comeback from Corcoran."

The reassuring words, so confidently spoken, did much to allay Louise's
fears. Uneventfully the days slipped by, and with every one that passed
the boy and girl breathed more freely. Not only were they skilled
workers but they were earnest and ambitious to give of their best.
Moreover they had behind them an untarnished record for faithful
attendance at the mills. Such service, argued they, must be of value,
and when matched against much of the grudging, incompetent labor about
them should be of sufficient worth to keep them on Davis and Coulter's
payroll. All they asked was fair play and to be judged on their merits.
This demand seemed reasonable enough; but alas, the world is not always
a just dealer and when on a Saturday morning not long before Christmas
Louise Harling looked into her pay envelope a cry of dismay escaped
her.

The fate she had feared had overtaken her. Davis and Coulter informed
her that after the fifteenth of the month, which fell a week hence, the
firm would not need her services.

Instantly two thoughts rushed to her mind. One was whether Hal had also
received similar notice; and the other was that all the holiday plans
she had so fondly cherished must now go by the boards. She would have
no money to buy presents or a Christmas dinner. The holiday season was
a dreadful time of year to be without a penny. Try as she would to
conceal her disappointment her lip trembled.

When Hal met her that night and they started home she could hardly
utter a syllable. It was not alone her own trouble that depressed her.
She longed and yet dreaded to hear what had befallen her brother. Were
a calamity like hers to come to him then indeed had misfortune
descended upon the Harling household. How would the invalid mother and
the feeble old grandfather get on without money? How would medicines be
procured? Or the rent be paid?

Hal, however, was to all appearances his serene self. He talked and
jested quite in his usual manner and if he were keeping something back
he certainly succeeded in doing so to perfection. Perhaps, argued she,
he had not been discharged at all. If not, why should this disgrace
have come to her? For in a measure it was a disgrace. When you lost
your job in the mill all Baileyville knew it and discussed the
circumstances, weighing the justice or injustice of the act. Certainly,
thought Louise to herself, she had toiled as faithfully as she knew
how. Had there been fault with her work at least she was not conscious
of it. It was mortifying, galling, to be turned away without a word of
explanation.

"What's the matter, Sis?" Hal questioned, at last noticing that his
chatter failed to elicit its usual a gay response.

Louise hesitated, shrinking from putting her tidings into words.

"You look as if you'd seen a ghost, old girl," smiled her brother
facetiously. "What's up?"

"I've been--they don't want----"

Hal halted, aghast.

"You don't mean to say they've asked you to quit?"

"Yes."

The boy's eyes blazed.

"It's Corcoran, the cur! He's done it to get back at me for what I said
to him."

"You think so?"

"Sure!"

"But why choose me? I had nothing to do with the squabble."

"That's just the point. He's smart enough to know it would hit me a
darn sight harder to have you lose your job than to lose my own,"
blustered her brother wrathfully.

"I wish I was sure it was only that."

"Why?"

"Because then I wouldn't care so much. I should know there was nothing
the matter with my work."

"Of course there isn't. You're one of the best operators they've got in
the mill. Hines, one of the bosses, told me so only the other day."

"Really?" The girl's face brightened. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh, I don't know. Forgot it, I guess," smiled Hal. It was not his way
to pass on compliments. Had the criticism been adverse he would have
told it quickly enough.

"Well, I'm awfully glad he said so."

"Yes, it was very decent of him. Everybody knows though that you're a
fine worker--even old Corcoran himself, I'll be bound, although he
wouldn't admit it. You're quick, careful, prompt and never absent. What
else do they want? Oh, Corcoran was behind this, all right. It wasn't
your work sacked you. It was plain spite."

"I'm thankful for that!" sighed Louise.

"I'm not. It makes me hot," burst out Hal.

"Still, it is better than losing your place because your work was so
poor you couldn't hold the job," smiled the girl.

"I can't see it that way. This is just low down and unfair."

"But I don't mind that. I know I wasn't to blame."

"You bet you weren't. I wish I had Corcoran here. I'd shake the
daylights out of him."

"Whose daylights are going to be shaken out now?" inquired a laughing
voice, and the brother and sister turned to see Carl McGregor beside
them.

"Old Corcoran up at the works," snarled Hal. "He's given Louise the
sack!"

Carl did not speak. He knew only too well how genuine was this
disaster. In the sympathetic silence that followed the three young
persons seemed to draw closer together.

"It isn't as if Loulie had done anything to deserve such a slam," Hal
suddenly declared. "He's just taking out his spite on me and he's
chosen this means of doing it. To light on a woman! I'd a hundred times
rather he'd shipped me. But it's like him."

Moodily the three walked on.

"Of course, I must get some other place right away," Louise said
presently, as if thinking aloud. "I don't know just what. I've never
worked anywhere but in the mills and I have no other trade. To be
turned away from Davis and Coulter won't be much of a recommendation
for me either, I'm afraid."

"Oh, you can get a hundred jobs," announced Hal, with a confidence he
did not feel. "Don't you fret."

"I don't know." His sister shook her head. "Scores of Baileyville girls
are idle."

The statement met with no denial. Who could combat it? It was only too
true.

"Not girls like you," Carl ventured, determined to be optimistic.

"Girls exactly like me, Carlie," smiled Louise.

"Oh, you won't be idle," murmured Hal.

"I can't be--I simply can't. We've got to have money."

Once again her companions found themselves unable to refute the
declaration.

They had turned into the main thoroughfare of the town and were
threading their way along a sidewalk teeming with the throng of
Saturday shoppers that is such a characteristic part of the life of a
mill town. The street beside them was black with trucks, motor cars,
and the congested traffic of a manufacturing center.

Suddenly there was a cry from Carl.

"Jove!" exclaimed he. "Look at that kid!"

In his horror he put out his hand to clutch his friend's arm. But his
fingers closed on empty air.

Hal Harling was gone!

What followed happened so quickly that it was more like the shiftings
of a moving picture than an incident in real life.

Hal bounded into the seething maelstrom of the street, caught up a
little boy midway in the stream of rushing vehicles and held him aloft
in safety.

The baby had obviously been pursuing a small black puppy whose dangling
leash told a story of escape from captivity. Making the most of his
freedom the dog had run recklessly along and the child had dashed after
him, too intent on recapturing his pet to heed whither the chase took
him. It was little short of a miracle that he had not been killed and
for his rescue from such a fate he had the quick wit of Hal Harling to
thank.

A second later all passing on the street had stopped and crowds of
spectators surged around the young hero. Above the tense stillness
could be heard Hal's comforting voice:

"Sure we'll find your dog for you, little chap. Don't cry. You say he's
called Midget. That's a fine name for a dog, isn't it? See! Somebody
over there on the sidewalk has him already. We'll go and get him."

As the two chubby arms closed about Hal's neck into the center of the
crowd catapulted a frenzied nursemaid who madly rushed up to young
Harling.

"He's not hurt a mite," Hal announced, reassuringly. "I guess he ran
away from you, didn't he?"

"He was leading the dog and the leash slipped out of his hands," gasped
the affrighted girl. "Before I'd a notion what he was going to do he
was off after the puppy. I'm weak as a rag. If anything had happened to
him----"

"But it didn't," smiled Hal.

"No, thanks to you, and to the good Lord!"

Then, seizing the child in her arms, she said:

"There, Billie, you see what comes of running out of the yard after
Midget. You might have been killed but for this kind gentleman."

"Indeed he might! He would have been. I saw the whole thing myself,"
broke in a policeman who had joined the group.

"I'm glad he's all right," reiterated Hal, as he gave the child into
the maid's care.

A man approached leading Midget and interest being for the moment
diverted from himself Hal made his escape.

In a doorway he spied Louise and Carl.

"Oh, it was wonderful of you, Hal!" his sister murmured.

"It was just lucky," Hal returned a bit gruffly. "Come on! Let's get
out of this push. We'll be late for supper if we don't hike along."

And it was characteristic of Hal Harling that this was the only
allusion he made to the adventure.

CHAPTER IV

PROBLEMS

Although temporarily buoyed up by the episode of the afternoon Carl
McGregor returned home with spirits at a lower ebb than they had been
for many a day. To be out of work was a very real tragedy in the world
in which he lived. He knew only too well how indispensable was money
and that the necessity of it was even greater in the Harling home than
in his own. The Harlings, alas, had no absent Uncle Frederick to fall
back upon. On the contrary the entire upkeep of their home and family
fell upon the young shoulders of the boy and girl who toiled at the
spinning mills. Now with Louise out of the race Hal would be left alone
with all the burden, and whether he would be able to carry so heavy a
one was a question. Undoubtedly he would not be forced to bear it for
long. Louise would find employment--she must find it. Did not the need
compel it? And was she not far too capable a worker to be out of a
place? Why, scores of people would seek her help eagerly when once it
was known her assistance was available.

Sound as these arguments were, however, facts did not bear them out.
Apparently nobody in Baileyville wished help, no matter how excellent
its quality. Every night the report from the Harlings was the
same--Louise could find nothing to do. Even Mrs. McGregor who was
ordinarily able to straighten out every sort of tangle had no remedy
for the present pitiable dilemma. The only employment it was in her
power to secure for the girl was fine sewing and Louise, restricted by
her factory training, could not sew. A week went by and still nothing
presented itself. Mrs. Harling and the aged grandfather, from whom the
calamity had been kept as long as it was possible to conceal it, at
length took up the worry.

"Whatever is going to become of us now?" bewailed each in turn.
"Where's the food and rent coming from?"

Hal fidgeted.

Every day he looked more harrowed and distressed, and the smile that
had formerly come so spontaneously came now with an effort. He had
taken on an extra job evenings, that of delivery boy for the local
grocer. It did not bring in much, to be sure, and it kept him on his
feet at the end of the day when often he was too tired to stand.
However, all these disadvantages were lost sight of in the few
additional dollars derived from the makeshift.

"Mother says you can't keep this up, old chap," remarked Carl dismally.
"She says you will be getting tired out and sick and then where will
you be?"

"But we've got to have the cash, kid! _Got to have it_, don't you see?
It was I who landed us in this plight and I'm the one to get us out.
It's nobody's fault but mine."

Carl sighed.

"I suppose Corcoran wouldn't----"

"Take Louise back if I were to humble myself," flared Hal. "Do you
think for a moment I'd ask him? Do you imagine I'd gratify him by
letting him know how hard he'd hit us? Not on your life! For all he
knows the Harlings are rich as mud and don't care a hurrah for his old
job. I want him to think that too. If he pictures me eating out of his
hand he's mistaken."

Carl looked grave.

"It is all very well to be proud," affirmed he, smiling at his friend's
characteristic attitude of mind. "But sometimes you can't afford to be
too cocky. If, as you say, you pitched into Corcoran and were wrong----"

"But I wasn't wrong," broke in Hal. "I meant every word I said; it was
the truth and I'd say it again if I got the chance. You'd have said the
same yourself if you'd been there. The thing that got his goat was that
it was true."

"But you can't go round telling people the truth about themselves, old
man," observed Carl with a wisdom far beyond his years. "They won't
stand for it."

"I'll bet I would. I'd a darn sight rather a person told me straight to
my face what he thought of me than whispered it behind my back."

"That's what I'm trying to do now," grinned Carl.

Young Harling's lips curved into a smile.

"Why, so you are, kid," returned he. "I didn't recognize the stunt at
first. You're a mighty white little chap, Carl. Maybe I was wrong to
light into Corcoran as I did. Of course he is my superior and I really
had no business to sarse him, even if he was wrong. But he is such a
cad! It made my blood boil to hear him berate that poor little Mayo
girl--and for something she did not do, too."

"I know."

"Well, if you were in this mess what would you do? Come now. Give me
some of your sage advice."

"You don't suppose you ought to go to----"

"Corcoran and apologize?" interrupted Hal hotly. "No, I don't. I'd
starve before I'd do that."

"But how about your grandfather, your mother, and Louise?"

"I shan't let them starve, if that's what you mean. You can bet your
life on that," cried Hal. "If anybody goes without it will be myself."

"You seem to be doing it all right."

"How do you know?"

"Don't you suppose I've eyes in my head? You're thin as a rail
already."

"Huh! That's only because I've been chasing round with bundles. I was
too fat, anyway; didn't get enough exercise at the mills."

"Hal Harling!"

"Straight goods, I didn't. Just stood and fed stuff into that loom from
morning till night. You don't call that exercise, do you?"

"I noticed that by night you were often all in, exercise or no
exercise," was the dry response. "Well, you've got to go your own gait,
I guess."

"I'll bet a hat _you_ wouldn't go and bow down to Corcoran."

The thrust told.

"Bow down to him? I'd crack his nut!"

Hal chuckled with satisfaction at his chum's loyalty.

"There you are, you see!" declared he. "You are every whit as rabid as
I am when it comes to the scratch."

"I'm afraid I'm more rabid when things hit you and Louise," murmured
Carl.

The two walked on without speaking, the mind of each busy with the
problem in hand.

Carl's imagination circled every mad avenue of escape from the
Harlings' financial crisis. If only he were rich! If only somebody
would suddenly leave him some money! If only--his brain halted in the
midst of its absurd gyrations.

If he were not rich; if he had no fairy fortune to pass over to Hal and
Louise, what was to hinder him from performing for them a far more
genuine service of friendship and affection? Instead of offering them
money that was dropped into his hand why should he not test out his
real regard for them by earning it? Many a boy his age, aye, younger
than he, earned money. Why should he be free of responsibility when
Hal, who was only a few years older, was weighed down with it?

Just why it had never occurred to him that if he earned money he might
with propriety hand it over to his own hard-working mother is a
question. Often with eyes fixed on the clouds we lose sight of the
things just beneath our noses. Perhaps that was the explanation of
Carl's lack of thought. Be that as it may, certain it was that he
parted from his chum afire with the generous impulse of making a
personal effort to reinforce the Harlings' slender income.

He was only a stone's throw from home and what led him to turn the
other way, pass into Beaver Street, and go south toward Orient Avenue
he could not have told. Possibly he was still thrilling with newly
awakened altruism and was not yet ready to have his roseate dreams
disturbed. Or he may have been pondering so deeply how to put his
impulses into action that he failed to heed just where he was going. At
any rate before he realized it there he was in the fashionable section
of the village, walking along between rows of bare and stately elms and
great rambling houses glimpsed from behind high brick walls.

He had not been in this part of Baileyville for months. There was
nothing to take him there. What connection had his life with those
fortunate lives that made leisure and luxury things to be taken for
granted? Even now he started at finding himself in a location so
incongruous; or rather at finding so incongruous a person as himself in
an environment so out of harmony with his thought and station.

He whirled about to start homeward and it was just at this instant that
a trim racing car drew up beside him and a man's voice inquired
pleasantly:

"Lost your way, youngster?"

Carl glanced at the speaker.

He was a gray-haired, clean-shaven man, with fresh color and keen blue
eyes. Although muffled to the chin in a raccoon coat that almost met
the fur of his cap there was a splendid vigor about him that breathed
health, energy, and the rewards a temperate life brings. Everything
about him seemed clearness personified--eye, complexion, voice.

"I've not lost my way, thank you, sir," Carl answered. "I just got to
thinking and have wandered farther from home than I meant to."

"Are you going back to town now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Jump in and I'll give you a lift."

Raising the fur robes invitingly the stranger reached to open the door.

Carl was almost too surprised to speak.

"You're very kind, sir," he contrived to stammer. "I should be glad of
a ride. I don't often get one. Besides, I ought to have been at home
long ago."

The honesty of the reply apparently pleased the motorist for, smiling,
he tucked the lad in and asked:

"Where do you live?"

"At Mulberry Court, sir."

"I'm afraid I don't quite know where that is."

"Very likely not. It's a little tenement house off Minton Street. Maybe
you never were there."

"I guess I never was," the man replied simply.

"It's a nice place to live," continued Carl, glowing with local pride.
"Of course it isn't like this. We've no trees. But in winter trees
aren't much good anyway; and in summer we can go to the parks."

To this philosophic observation his companion agreed with a nod and
they sped on in silence.

The vast stretches of snow, so unsightly in the city's narrow
thoroughfares, were on every hand white and sparkling, and each little
shrub rearing its head out of the spangled fields was laden with
ermine.

The boy drew a long breath, drinking in the crystal air.

"Gee!" he burst out impulsively. "This is great. I feel cheered up
already."

The man driving the car shot him a quiet smile.

"I'm glad to hear that," said he. "So you were out of spirits, were
you?"

"I was fussed within an inch of my life," owned Carl with engaging
candor.

"In wrong somewhere?"

"Oh, I'm not; but my chum is."

"What's the matter?"

"Why, you see his sister has just been fired from Davis and Coulter's
mills. It wasn't her fault at all, either. Her brother gave the
foreman, Corcoran, a jawing because he got too fresh with one of the
girls. Corcoran didn't say a word at the time but a couple of weeks
later he took out his spite on Hal Harling's sister, Louise. I suppose
he was mad and decided on this way to get even."

"Humph!"

"Maybe he thought he'd take Hal's pride down and make him come crawling
to him on his knees to get Louise back into the mills. It is a rotten
time to be out of work. Louise has tried and tried to get another job
and can't land a thing. But whether she does or not, her brother isn't
going crawling to Corcoran. He's not afraid of the old tyrant. Hal
Harling isn't afraid of anything. Why, only the other day he tore into
the street and saved a little runaway chap from being mashed to jelly
under a lot of automobiles. The baby was chasing a dog and got into the
middle of High Street before he realized it. He would certainly have
been killed had it not been for Hal."

"Whose baby was it?" questioned the man beside him in an odd voice.

"Oh, I don't know. We didn't wait to see. Hal was anxious to get out of
the crowd and we were late home anyway. So Harling gave the kid to the
nursemaid and lit out."

There was a muffled: "I see!" from his listener.

"And where do you come in in all this tangle?" queried the stranger
presently.

"I? Why, you see Hal Harling is my----" a sudden reserve fell upon the
lad. It was impossible to explain to anybody just what Hal Harling was
to him. "I chase round with the Harlings a lot," explained he. "They
are almost like my own family."

"Oh, so that's it!"

"I'd decided just now to hunt for a job and see if I couldn't make good
the money Louise is missing. She can't seem to find a darn thing to do,
poor kid. She's been out of work over a week now and they've got to
have money or Mrs. Harling and Grandfather Harling will starve to
death. Of course I'm not so much," continued Carl modestly. "But I'm
willing to work and I'm sure I could earn something."

The owner of the velvet-wheeled car did not speak at once. Then he
remarked abruptly:

"You don't go to school to-morrow, do you?"

"Saturday? Not on your--no, sir."

"Then you'd be free to come to my office to-morrow morning and see me,
wouldn't you?"

"Do you think you could give me a job? Sure I'd come!" ejaculated Carl
with zest.

"Good! Come to the Berwick building, Number 197 Dalby Street, to-morrow
at ten o'clock. Give your name and--by the by, what is your name?"

"Carl McGregor, sir."

"A fine old Scotch name. Well, you write it on a card or a piece of
paper and give it to the man you will find at the door. Maybe I shall
be able to do something for you."

The car rolled up to the curb and stopped.

"You've been mighty kind, sir," said Carl, as he leaped out. "You've
brought me nearly home."

"Oh, I was going this way anyway," smiled the man in the fur coat. "You
won't have far to walk now, will you?"

"Only a block. I'll be home in a jiffy."

"You won't forget about to-morrow."

"_Forget!_"

Laughing at something that evidently amused him very much the stranger
started his engine.

As for Carl, he raced home as fast as ever his feet would go. Already
he was late for supper, a fact always annoying to his mother, who
considered tardiness one of the most flagrant of sins. To be sure he
was not often late, for miss what other functions he might he seldom
missed his meals. To-night, however, the table had been cleared, the
dishes washed, and only a saucepan of corn-meal mush, steaming on the
back of the stove, remained as a souvenir of the feast.

"For goodness' sake, Carl, wherever have you been?" asked Mrs.
McGregor, as he entered, panting from his run up the long flights of
stairs. "I've been worried to death about you. Go wash your hands and
come and eat your supper right away. You know I don't like you out
after dark."

"I know it, Ma," the boy responded penitently. "I'm mighty sorry. I'd
no idea, though, that it was so late."

"Where've you been?"

"To walk."

"To walk? Just to walk? Mercy on us! Not just walking round for
nothing!"

"I'm afraid so, yes."

"Who was with you?"

"Nobody."

For an instant Mrs. McGregor looked searchingly at her son.

"Well, did you ever hear the like of that!" commented she, addressing
the younger children who clustered about their brother with curiosity.
"What set you to go walking?"

"I don't know, Ma. Just a freak, I guess."

"A foolish freak--worrying the whole family, delaying supper, and what
not. Now come and eat your porridge without more delay. Mary, go bring
the milk; and, Timmie, you fetch a clean saucer from the pantry.
Martin, stop pestering your brother until he eats something; he'll play
with you and Nell by and by. Such a noisy lot of bairns as you are! If
you're not careful you'll wake James Frederick."

Nevertheless, in spite of her grumbling, the mother regarded her brood
of clamoring youngsters with affectionate pride. They were indeed a
husky group, red-cheeked, high-spirited, and happy; their chatter, as
she well knew, was nothing more than the normal exuberance of
childhood.

While Carl hungrily devoured his big bowlful of cereal his mother
continued her sewing. She was working on a film of blue material
a-glitter with silver beads that twinkled from its folds like stars.
Every now and then little Nell, fascinated by the sparkle of the
fabric, would start toward the corner where her mother sat in the ring
of brilliant lamplight.

Instantly one of the older brothers or sisters would intercept the
child, catching up the wriggling mite and explaining softly:

"No, dearie, no! Nell must not trouble mother. Mother's working."

It was an old, oft-repeated formula which every one of the little group
had heard from the time he had been able to toddle. Familiar, too, was
the picture of their mother seated in the circle of light, her basket
of gayly hued spools beside her, and a cloud of shimmering splendor
wreathing her feet. Sometimes this glory was pink; sometimes it was
blue, lavender, or yellow; not infrequently it was black or a smoky
mist of gray. The children always delighted in the brighter colors,
crowding round with eagerness whenever a new gown was brought home to
see what hue the exciting parcel might contain.

"Oh, nothing but a sleepy old gray one this time!" Timmie would bewail.
"And gray beads, too! Do hurry up, Ma, and get it done so we can have
something else."

But let the paper disclose a brilliant blue or a red tulle and
instantly every child clapped his hands.

Exultantly they examined the scintillating jet or iridescent sequins.

"Oh, this is the best yet, Ma!" Carl would cry. "It's a peach of a
dress."

Their ingenious admiration did much to transform their mother's tedious
task into a fine art and helped her to regard it with dignity.
Certainly its influence on the characters of her children was
inestimable. Not alone did it answer their craving for beauty, but far
better than this æsthetic gratification was the education it gave them
in thoughtfulness and unselfishness. Consideration for their mother,
restraint, independence, all emerged out of the yards of foolish gauze
and the frivolous spangles.

Therefore Mrs. McGregor sewed on serene in spirit and if, as to-night,
her task barred her from secrets her children might amid greater
leisure have bestowed on her, the circumstance was accepted as one of
the unavoidable disadvantages attending constant occupation.

It was regrettable she had not more time to talk with her sons and
daughters separately. Confidences were shy and volatile things that
could not be delivered in a hurry or hastily fitted into the chinks of
a busy day. Confidences depended on mood and could not be regulated so
that they would be forthcoming in the few seconds snatched between one
duty and another.

As a result it came about that after Carl had swallowed his supper,
frolicked with the younger children and helped Mary put them to bed,
brought in the kindlings and coal for the morning fire, it was time for
him to tumble in between the sheets himself, and he did so without
mentioning to his mother or any one else his adventures of the
afternoon or his morrow's appointment with the stranger.

One does not always wish to relate his affairs before five small
brothers and sisters whose little ears drink in the story and whose
tiny tongues are liable artlessly to repeat it.

In the McGregor household there was affection and happiness; but, alas,
there was no such thing as privacy.

CHAPTER V

A TANGLE OF SURPRISES

Morning, to which Carl had looked forward for a moment with his mother,
brought, alas, even more meager opportunity for imparting secrets than
had the night before, for as was the custom of the McGregor family the
new day was launched amid a turmoil of confusion. Hence it came about
that although Carl made several valiant attempts to waylay his mother
in the pantry, or corral her in her room, he was each time thwarted and
was never able to get beyond a vague introduction to the topic so near
his heart. At length a multitudinous list of errands to the butcher,
grocer, and baker was handed him and there was no alternative but catch
up his hat and coat and speed forth upon these commissions. And no
sooner were they all fulfilled than the hour for his appointment with
the stranger arrived and, palpitating with the interest of his mission,
he set forth to the address to which he had been directed.

It was in the down-town part of the village and so busy was he dodging
trucks and hurrying pedestrians that he paid scant heed to anything but
the gilt numbers that dotted the street. In and out the crowd he wove
his way until above a doorway the magic characters he sought stared at
him.

There may have been, and probably were, signs announcing the nature of
the business in which this mysterious friend was engaged but if so Carl
was blind to them. All that concerned him was to find the place that
sheltered his remarkable acquaintance and ascertain the sequel of the
day before.

Therefore he walked timidly into the hallway and seeing at the other
end of it an oaken door panelled with ground glass that bore the
hieroglyphics of his quest he turned the heavy brass knob and walked
in.

The room was spacious and its rich furnishings and atmosphere of
stillness were in such marked contrast to the hubbub of the street that
he paused on the heavy rug, abashed. There was, however, no time for
retreat even had his courage failed him for the door behind him had no
sooner clicked together than a boy in a gray uniform came forward. As
he approached his eye swept with disapproval the shabby visitor and he
said, with an edge of sharpness crisping his tone:

"What can I do for you?"

"I want to see a--a--gentleman," stammered Carl. "I don't know his
name. I forgot to ask it. But he told me to come to this number to-day
at ten o'clock and give him my name on a piece of paper. I've got it
here somewheres."

Awkwardly he searched his pockets, the waiting messenger watching his
every movement.

It was a grimy morsel of parchment that was at length produced; but the
instant the supercilious page read the name scrawled upon it his
attitude changed from superiority to servility.

"This way, sir, if you please," said he, wheeling about.

Carl followed his guide, feeling, as he tagged across the silencing
rug, deplorably small, and painfully conscious of both his hands and
feet. He and his conductor passed through another door, threaded
labyrinthian aisles flanked by gaping clerks and faintly smiling
stenographers, and came at length to a third door which the youth
preceding him opened with a flourish.

"Mr. Carl McGregor," announced he in a stentorian tone.

All the blood in Carl's body rushed to his face.

The room before him was small and on its warmly tinted walls a few
pictures, some of which his school training led him to recognize as
Rembrandt reproductions, lent charm and interest to the interior. But
these details were of minor importance compared to the thrill he
experienced at discovering behind a great mahogany desk the mysterious
stranger of his motoring adventure.

Yes, it was he--there could be no question about that. And yet, now
that his hat and heavy fur coat were removed he appeared surprisingly
slender and youthful. His eyes, too, seemed bluer, his cheeks redder,
and his mouth more smiling.

"Well, shaver, you're prompt," announced he, pointing to the clock with
evident satisfaction.

"You said ten, sir."

"So I did. Nevertheless, I often say ten and get quarter past ten or
even eleven o'clock. Sit down."

He motioned toward a huge leather chair at his elbow and slipping into
it the boy perched with anticipation on its forward edge.

"Well, what about that Miss Harling we were talking of yesterday? Has
she a position yet?"

"Since last night, you mean? I don't know, sir. I haven't seen any of
the Harlings to-day. But I hardly think so."

The stranger pursed his lips.

"Too bad! Too bad!" he murmured. "And you are still for helping the
family out by taking a job, are you?"

"If I can get one; yes, sir."

"Just what kind of work had you in mind?"

"Why--I--I--hadn't thought about it."

"I suppose you go to school."

"Yes, sir. That's the dickens of it. My mother makes me. I'd a great
deal rather go into Davis and Coulter's cotton mills. Lots of boys and
girls my age do go there, and that is where my father worked before he
died. But Ma is hot on education. She says I've got to have one, and
she insists on sewing at home on all sorts of fool flummeries for some
dressmaker so I can. It's rotten of me not to be more pleased about it,
I suppose."

While Carl fumbled with his cap the man at the desk tilted back in his
chair, regarding him narrowly.

"Your school work can't leave you very much time for anything else,"
remarked he.

"Oh, yes, it does," the lad hastened to retort. "I have Saturdays
and--and--spare hours at night. I'd even work Sundays if there was
anything I could do."

"At that rate I am afraid you would not find much time for skating or
baseball. People have to have fresh air and exercise, you know, to keep
well."

"I don't have to play," protested Carl with great earnestness. "Anyhow
I get heaps of exercise and fresh air doing errands. Besides, we live
up five flights."

His listener turned aside his head.

"If it comes to exercise I get all I want right at home," persisted the
boy. "I've a crew of little brothers and sisters, too, and when I'm not
busy I help take care of them so Ma can sew. Just you try doing it once
if you are looking for exercise. And then I wheel the baby out."

There was a twinkle in the eye of the man at the desk but he said
gravely:

"Isn't it going to bother them at home if you take a position? How does
your mother feel about it?"

"I haven't had a chance to ask her," Carl blurted out with honesty.
"All last evening she was rushing to finish that spangled thing; and
this morning she had the kids to dress and I had errands to do. It's
awful hard to get a chance to talk to Ma by herself. Some of the
children are always clawing at her skirts and bothering her."

"You do believe, though, in talking things over with your mother."

"Sure! We always tell Ma everything if we can get a chance. So does all
Mulberry Court, for that matter. Ma's that sort."

The stranger toyed with an ivory letter-opener thoughtfully.

"Now I'll tell you what we'll do," began he at last. "To-day is
Saturday, isn't it?"

Carl nodded.

"Well, if your friends, the Harlings, are not straightened out by
Monday morning I will let you begin a week from to-day as errand boy in
this office."

"Bully!" cried the delighted applicant.

"If, on the other hand," continued the gentleman at the desk, speaking
slowly and evenly, and not heeding the interruption, "Miss Harling
finds work and the family do not need your aid, you must agree to put
in your free time at home helping your mother as you have been doing in
the past. Is that a bargain?"

"Y-e-s."

"What's the matter?"

"It just seems to me we might as well settle it definitely now that I
am to come here next week. To-day is Saturday and I don't believe
Louise will find work before Monday morning. Of course she can't do
anything about getting a job Sunday."

Although there was a perceptible tremor of disappointment in the boy's
voice the stranger appeared not to notice it. Rising, he put out his
hand with a kindly smile.

"I am afraid the agreement I have made with you is the best I can do at
present," said he. "I will be true to my part of it if you will be true
to yours. I promise you that if the Harlings' affairs do not take an
upward turn by Monday you shall come to their rescue."

"Thank you, sir."

"I wouldn't worry any more about this, if I were you, sonny," concluded
the man. "Go home and try to be satisfied. I'll keep the place for you,
remember. It is Carl McGregor, isn't it, of----"

"Mulberry Court--the top flat."

"And did you tell me these friends of yours, the Harlings, lived there
too?"

"Oh, no, sir! I wish they did. The Harlings are at Number 40 Broad
Street. It is the corner house. They took the tenement because there
was sun, and because it entertains Grandfather and Mrs. Harling to look
out the window. They can't ever go out and it cheers them up to have
something to see. It costs more to live there than where we do, but Hal
and Louise decided it was worth it."

"Under the circumstances I imagine it is," assented the stranger.
"Well, we will wish them luck."

"I hope they have it!"

"So do I." As he spoke the man pressed a bell in answer to which the
uniformed page appeared.

"Show this young gentleman out, Billie," said he. "Good-by, youngster!
Good-by!"

The farewell was cordial and in its cadence rang so disconcerting a
finality that try as he might Carl could not repress a conviction that
in spite of his suave promises his new-found friend did not really
expect to see him again.

"I guess there are folks like that," meditated he, as he walked
dispiritedly home. "They are awful pleasant to your face and give you
the feeling they are going to do wonders for you. But when it comes to
the scratch they slide from under. This chap is one of that slick
bunch, I'll bet a hat."

It was not a cheering reflection and with every step lower and lower
ebbed his hopes. It chanced that his pathway to Mulberry Court led past
the corner of Broad Street (or if it did not really lead him there his
subconscious mind did) and once in the vicinity what more natural than
that he should drop in at Number 40 to pass the time of day?
Grandfather Harling loved to have visitors. He said they cheered him
up.

But to-day neither the old gentleman nor any of the Harling family
needed cheering. Carl found them in such high spirits that for a time
it was difficult to get any of the group to talk coherently.

"What do you suppose has happened, Carl?" cried Louise, the instant he
was inside the door. "The most wonderful thing! You never could guess
if you guessed forever."

"If it is as hopeless as that I shan't try," laughed Carl.

"But it is amazing, a miracle!" put in Mrs. Harling.

"We can't understand it at all," quavered Grandfather Harling, who was
quite as excited as the rest.

"Well, what _is_ it?" the boy demanded.

"You'll never believe it," laughed Louise with shining eyes. "I've had
a letter. You couldn't guess who it's from!"

She held a square white envelope high above her head.

"I'm going to have it framed and hand it down to my
great-great-grandchildren."

"You might let me see it," coaxed Carl, putting out his hand.

"Oh, it is far too precious to be touched. It is going to be an
archive, an heirloom, you know."

"Oh, come on and tell a chap what's happened," urged Carl, his patience
beginning to wane.

"Well, think of this! I've had a note from Mr. Coulter--not from the
firm, understand, but from the great J. W. himself, written by his own
hand. He says he hears that through some error my name has been dropped
from the Davis and Coulter payroll, and he not only asks me to come
back to the mill but sends me a cheek for double the sum that I have
lost by being out. Can you beat that?"

"Oh, Louise, how bully! I _am_ glad! But how do you suppose----"

"That's exactly what we don't know. It seems like magic, doesn't it? I
never knew before that Mr. Coulter kept such close track of what went
on at the mills. He doesn't come there often because he is always at
the down-town office. When he does visit the mills he simply strolls
through them as if they belonged to somebody else rather than to
himself. Of course he doesn't know one of the workers and I've always
fancied he didn't care much about us. But this proves how wrong I was
to think so. He does care, you see, and means everybody shall have a
square deal. I shall go back Monday and work harder than ever for him.
You will work your fingers off for such a man as that, you know."

"It certainly is white of him!" Carl agreed.

"It is nothing but justice," asserted Mrs. Harling proudly. "Still,
justice isn't a common commodity in this world."

"Evidently it isn't Mr. Coulter's fault if it isn't, Mother," Louise
replied. "And isn't it nice, Carl, that I am not to go back to work
under Mr. Corcoran. Oh, I forgot to tell you that. That is almost the
best of all. No! I am to be in the shipping department where the work
is lighter and the pay better. Won't Hal be tickled to death when he
hears it? He'll be more convinced than ever that he did the right thing
to lay Corcoran out."

"I think he did. Still, it was a dangerous experiment and this should
be a warning to him," put in Mrs. Harling. "Hal must learn to be more
careful with his temper, his tongue, and those fists of his. If he
isn't he is going to get into serious trouble some day."

Carl, however, was not listening to Mrs. Harling's moralizing.

"I wish I knew how Mr. Coulter found out about Louise," murmured he,
half aloud.

Well, this was certainly a most satisfactory termination to the
Harlings' troubles. He was genuinely glad the affair had turned so
fortunately. And yet in his heart lurked a vague regret. This would
mean that probably he would never see or hear from the mysterious hero
of the red racing car again. Could the stranger have had any knowledge
of what was to happen and did that information account for his jaunty
adieu? Of course such a thing was impossible. And yet how odd and
puzzling it all was!

CHAPTER VI

THE WEB WIDENS

"Wherever did you disappear to?" inquired his mother when, hungry but
triumphant, Carl came home. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

"I didn't know you wanted me this morning, Ma," the boy replied, an
afterglow of happiness still on his face.

"I didn't really want you but I wanted to know where you were. I've
asked you time and time again when you go out to tell me where you're
going."

"I wanted to, Mother, but it was such a long story. Last night you were
too busy to hear it; and this morning there was no chance to talk to
you either."

He heard his mother sigh.

"It's a pretty kind of a life I lead if my own children can't get a
minute to talk to me."

"But you are busy, Ma. You know you are."

"I certainly do. Nobody knows it better," replied the woman with a sad
shake of her head.

Carl, sensing the regret in her tone, hastened to say:

"Well, at least the family is not so thick around here now as usual.
Where is everybody?"

"Mary is out with James Frederick; Timmie has gone to the park to
coast; and Martin and Nell are at the day nursery."

"Then we have it all to ourselves."

"For a second or two, yes."

"That's bully!"

Drawing up a kitchen chair he sat down beside his mother.

"It's nice to have them gone sometimes," remarked he. "The kids make
such a racket."

"They'll not always be making it," returned Mrs. McGregor philosophically.
"And anyway, the three of them put together can never equal the
hullabaloo you used to make when you were their age."

"I'm quiet enough now," grinned Carl sheepishly.

"Quiet, you call it, do you? Quiet! And you prancing home from every
ball game with a black eye or else the clothes half torn off you!" She
chuckled mischievously. "But you're not telling me where you've been.
Up to some deviltry, I'll be bound, or you wouldn't be so anxious to
get it off your conscience."

"I haven't been up to any high jinks this time, Ma," protested the lad
soberly. "You'll see when I tell you."

Slowly he related his story while his mother bent over her needle,
spangling with brilliants a gauze of azure hue. She was a wonderful
listener, sympathetic in her intentness.

When the boy had finished her hand wandered to touch his rough sleeve.

"A kind deed is never amiss in the world," observed she briefly. "If we
would but pass on to other folks the kindness people do to us the world
would soon become a pleasanter place. I'm thankful to know Louise has
her job back, or rather that she has a better one. She's a good girl
and deserves it. Besides, with Christmas coming, it would be hard to be
without money."

"And Mr. Coulter--wasn't he great? And wasn't it all funny?"

"Funny is hardly the word; but I'll agree that Mr. Coulter was great.
It is always great for a big man to take on his soul the troubles of
those needier than himself. Well, he's done a good deed this day and
may he be the happier for it. And he will be--never fear! I wonder how
he got wind of the trouble Louise was in? You don't suppose----" She
halted a moment as if suddenly struck by a new thought; then she
laughed and shrugged her shoulders, "Of course it couldn't be--how
ridiculous! Well, anyway, it is splendid everything has come out so
well. And now that you're here, sonny, would you mind fetching some
coal from the shed and starting up the fire for dinner? Mary'll be back
soon and 'twould be a nice surprise for her to find the kettle
boiling."

"So it would!" answered Carl, leaping up to do his mother's bidding.

"I'm not forgetting you'd like to do a bit of coasting or skating
to-day," Mrs. McGregor continued. "If you will fit in a few errands
early in the afternoon I'll let you off at two o'clock for a holiday."

"That will be great, Ma! But--but don't you----"

"It will be all right, sonny. Tim has had his play this morning and he
shall help the rest of the day. Hush a minute! Isn't that Mrs. O'Dowd's
knock? Very like she's up to ask me to run down and see little Katie
who is laid up with a sore throat. Well, I'll go but I won't be long.
Meantime if you can lend Mary a hand dinner will be through the quicker
and you will be off to play the earlier."

Thus it happened that before two o'clock Carl McGregor was one of the
shouting throng of boys that crowded the small pond in Davis Park. Amid
swirling skaters and a confusion of hockey sticks he moved in and out
the thick of the game. So intent was he upon the sport that he might
have continued playing until dark had not a boy at his elbow suddenly
piped:

"There goes Hal Harling! Hi, Hal! Come on down!"

"Harling! Harling!" cried the other boys, taking up the call.

"Come on and play, Hal! You can have Sanderson's skates. He's going
home."

"Can't do it!" laughed the giant, waving his hand.

"Oh, come on, old top!"

"Not to-night, fellers! Got to go home."

"I've got to see Harling!" Carl exclaimed, hurriedly loosening his
skates.

"You're not going, too!"

"Got to. So long! Hold on, Hal! I'm coming with you."

Scrambling up the bank, Carl overtook his friend.

"Hullo, Carlie! What struck you to quit?" asked he unceremoniously.

"Time I was getting home. Besides, I wanted to see you."

A smile passed between them.

"To tell the truth, I hoped I'd spy you somewhere, kid. I've got great
news! Corcoran has been fired! What do you know about that?"

"Corcoran!"

"The old man himself--no other!"

"Jove! Why, I thought you said he'd been at the mills all his life."

"So he has."

"But--but--to fire him now!"

"Well, he hasn't actually been fired," amended young Harling, "but so
far as I'm concerned it amounts to the same thing. He's been
transferred to another department and he isn't to be a boss any more,
poor old chap!"

"But aren't you glad?" questioned Carl with surprise.

"Why, yes, in some ways," returned Hal thoughtfully. "Yes, of course
I'm glad not to have him sarsing the girls and pestering me. Still, I'm
sort of sorry for him."

"_Sorry?_"

Hal nodded.

"But I thought you----"

"I know! I know! I'm not saying he wasn't an awful old screw. But
somehow I don't believe he meant to be so flinty-hearted. You see, he
came and talked to me to-day--talked like a regular human being. You
could have knocked me over. It seems--a funny thing--that kid I picked
up out of the street the other day was his."

"Corcoran's kid!"

"Yep! Can you beat it? Of course I hadn't a notion who the little tike
belonged to; but even if I had I should have done the same thing. You
wouldn't let a kid like that be run over no matter who his father was."

"But--but--Corcoran!" gasped Carl. "How did he know it was you who
rescued his baby?"

"Somebody told him. He said it cut him up terribly because of the way
he'd treated Louise."

"Served him right."

"Maybe! But he was cut up, poor old cuss! You'd have been sorry for him
yourself, if you'd heard him. He isn't all brute by any means. Why,
when he spoke about his little boy----"

"But Louise!"

"I know. It was a low-down trick and he said so himself. But he
declared it was an ill wind that blew nobody good, and he hinted that
maybe in consequence of the trouble she would be better off than if it
hadn't happened."

Carl bit his tongue to keep it silent. How he longed to impart to his
chum the good tidings that would greet him when he reached home! But he
must not spoil Louise's pleasure by telling the story of her good luck
for her.

"Oh, somehow things do seem to come round right if you wait long
enough," mumbled he.

"So mother says," echoed Hal moodily. "But you get almighty sick of
waiting sometimes. Even knowing you were right doesn't put pennies in
your pocket." He laughed with a touch of bitterness.

Again Carl was tempted to break the silence and reveal the wonderful
secret, and again he clamped his lips together.

Hal would hear the tidings soon enough now and his spirits would soar
the higher because of the depths to which they had descended. It was
always so. This broad range of mood was one of his chief charms.

Ah, how well he knew his friend and how accurately did he forecast what
would happen!

It was not five minutes after the two parted at the corner before Hal
Harling came leaping up the McGregors' stairway and gave a loud knock
at their door.

"Oh, you old tight-jaw!" announced he, when on entering, he beheld Carl
grinning at him from across the room. "You might have put me out of my
misery."

The boy laughed.

"It wasn't my secret! I'd have been a cur to butt in on Louise's fun."

"So you would!"

Quietly Mrs. McGregor glanced up from the sea of delicate blue gauze
foaming about her.

"A ready tongue is a gift of silver, but a silent one is a treasure of
pure gold," observed she quaintly.

CHAPTER VII

THE COMING OF THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

With the Harlings safely out of their difficulties Christmas, as Carl
jestingly observed, was free to approach and approach it did with a
speed incredible of belief. A big blizzard a week before it, which
transformed the suburban districts into a wonderland of beauty, merely
worked havoc however in Baileyville, causing muddy streets and slippery
pavements, and wrecking the skating in the park.

"Snow doesn't seem to be made for cities," remarked Mrs. McGregor in
reply to Carl's lamentations. "It is an old-fashioned institution that
belongs to the past. Here in town there is neither a place for it nor
does it do an atom of good to anybody unless it is the unemployed who
hail the work it brings."

"I hate the snow," wailed Timmie. "It isn't snow, anyway; it's just
slush."

"Ah, laddie, you should see one of the snowstorms of the old country!"
protested his Scotch mother reminiscently. "Then you would not say you
hated the snow. It turned everything it touched white as a Tartary
lamb."

"What's a Tartary lamb, Mother?" inquired Tim with interest.

"A Tartary lamb? Ask your big brother; he goes to school."

"I never heard of a Tartary lamb, Ma," flushed Carl.

"Mary had a little lamb," began Nell, who had caught the phrase.

"So she did, darling," laughed her mother as she picked up the child
and kissed her, "and its fleece was white as snow, too, for the song
says so; but it wasn't a Tartary lamb, dearie. It was just a common
one."

"What is a Tartary lamb, anyway, Ma?" Mary demanded.

Mrs. McGregor paused to put a length of silk into her needle.

"Long ago," began she, "before there were ships and trains, to say
nothing of automobiles and aeroplanes people had to stay at home in the
places where they happened to be born. Of course they could go by coach
or on horseback to a near-by city, but they could not go far; nor
indeed did they think of going because they did not know there was
anywhere to go. Nobody did any traveling in those days and as a result
there were no maps or travel books to set you thinking you must pack up
your traps to-morrow and start for some place you never had seen. But
by and by the compass was invented, larger and better ships came to be
built, and men got the idea the world was round instead of flat (as
they had at one time supposed), a discovery that comforted vastly the
timid souls who had always been afraid of falling off the edge of it.
Therefore, when it was at last proved that should you sail far, far
away your ship, instead of dropping off into space, would circle the
great ball we live on and come home again, some of those who were
brave, adventurous, and had money enough set out on voyages to see what
there was to be seen in other lands than those they had been brought up
in. Frenchmen thought it would be a grand thing to discover new
countries for France; Englishmen wanted new territory for England. So
it was all over the world. Thus this one and that one began to travel."

"Just as Columbus came to America, Ma," put in Tim.

"Exactly, dear," nodded his mother. "Now you can imagine what a hero
such a traveler became; how people admired his daring; and how half of
them wished they were going with him and the other half rejoiced that
they weren't. And when he came back there was great excitement to hear
where he had been and what he had seen! Every word he spoke was passed
from mouth to mouth, each person who repeated it adding to the story
until it grew like a snowball. And as was inevitable the more raptly
the populace listened the more marvelous became the stories."

"Like Jack Murphy when he gets home from the circus," put in Tim.

"Yes, very much like Jack Murphy, I am afraid; only sometimes these
travelers really believed the tales they told. Sometimes the stories
had been passed on to them by the natives of the strange countries they
visited, and how could they know that all which was told them was not
true? Such a tale was the legend of the Tartary lamb."

"Tell it to us, Mother," urged Mary.

"Well, it actually isn't much of a story, my dear. You see, when the
travelers from England, France, and other western countries went to the
East for the first time, they saw cotton growing, or if they did not
really see it, they heard there was such a thing. Now cotton was
entirely new to the voyagers and it seemed unbelievable that such a
plant could be. Some of the eastern natives told the visitors that in
each pod grew a little lamb with soft, white fleece. Orientals were
very ignorant in those days. The Tartars went even farther and said the
lamb bent the stalk he lived on down to the ground and ate all the food
within reach; and when he had nibbled up all the grass and roots around
him he died, and then it was that people took his fleece and twisted it
into thread, which was woven into garments. Thus the legend became
established and the belief in the Tartary lamb became so firm that for
several hundred years people even in England thought that in the Far
East there grew this wonderful plant with a vegetable lamb sprouting
from the top of it."

"How silly of them!" sniffed Carl.

"No sillier than lots of the things we now believe, probably," replied
his mother. "Aren't we constantly discovering how mistaken some of our
cherished beliefs were? That is what progress is. We learn continually
to cast aside outgrown notions and adopt wiser and better ones. So it
was in the past. The world was very young in those days, you must
remember, and people did not know so much about it as we do now. And
even we, with all our wisdom, are going to be laughed at years hence,
precisely as you are laughing now about those who believed the story of
the Tartary lamb. Men are going to say: '_Think of those poor, stupid
old things back in nineteen hundred and twenty-three who believed
so-and-so! How could they have done it?_'"

Carl was silent.

"When you consider this you will understand how it was that the eager
readers of the past devoured with wide-open eyes the tale-telling of
Sir John Mandeville; and should you ever read that ancient story, as I
hope you will sometime, you will be less surprised to hear that even he
declared that he had seen cotton growing and that when the pod of the
plant was cut open inside it was a little creature like a lamb. The
natives of the East ate both the fruit of the plant and the wee beast,
he explained. In fact he said he had eaten the thing himself."

"Why, the very idea!" gasped Mary.

"What a lie!" Carl burst out.

"I'm afraid Sir John was either not very truthful or he had a great
imagination," smiled Mrs. McGregor. "Still, you see, he was not alone
in his belief about the Tartary lamb. So many other people believed the
yarn that he probably thought he was telling the truth. And as for
eating it--well, he just had a strain of Jack Murphy in him. Besides,
there were no schools in 1322 to teach Sir John Mandeville better. And
anyway, who was to contradict the fable? Sir John had been to the East
and the other people hadn't. Why shouldn't they believe what he and
other travelers told them?"

"He did sort of have them, didn't he?" grinned Carl.

"How long was it before the public stopped believing such a ridiculous
story?" demanded Mary.

"About three hundred years," answered her mother. "In the meantime much
traveling had been done by the peoples of all nations and learning had
made great strides. Scientific men began to whisper there could be no
such thing as the lamb of the Tartars; it was not possible. Cotton was
merely a plant. You can imagine what discussions such an assertion as
that raised. The public had come to like the notion of the Tartary lamb
and did not wish to give it up; besides, if the story were all a myth,
it put the travelers who had told it in a very bad light, and shook the
confidence of readers in some of the other tales they had published.
Science always upsets us. None of us like to be jolted out of the
beliefs we have been brought up with and exchange them for others, no
matter how good the new ones are. So it was in sixteen hundred. The
populace resented having the Tartary lamb taken away from them."

Mrs. McGregor laughed.

"It was a pity Sir John Mandeville and the rest did not live long
enough to learn how mistaken they had been," mused Mary.

"Poor old Sir John! I guess it was as well for him that he didn't, for
in his day he was, you see, quite a celebrity. He might not have
relished living to see his fame evaporate. At least he had the courage
to make a trip to a strange and distant land, and for that we should
respect him since it took nerve to travel in those days. Moreover he
did his part and was a link in a civilization that went on after he was
gone. So the history of the world is built up. Each generation builds
on the blunders of the one before it--or should."

"How queer it makes you feel; and how small!" Mary reflected.

"Why?"

"Well, it just seems as if we didn't count for much," sighed the girl.

"On the contrary, dear child, we count for a great deal," instantly
retorted her mother. "Each one of us can have a share in the vast plan
of the universe and help carry it forward."

"How, Mother?"

"By doing all we can during our lifetime to make the world better," was
the answer. "Good men and good women make a good world, don't they? And
the better the world the farther ahead will be its civilization.
Progress is not all in wonderful discoveries of science, in fine
architecture, or in great books; much of it lies in the peoples of the
globe learning to live peacefully together and help one another.
Kindness to our neighbor, therefore, helps civilization. It cannot
avoid doing so if we live it on a large enough scale."

"I never thought of that before," meditated Carl.

"But you can see it is so, laddie," responded his mother. "A lack of
kindness and fairness in nations causes wars, and wars put the world
backward. It is in the peaceful times that nations grow. You know
yourself that you cannot build up anything when somebody else is
waiting to knock it down the minute you have it finished. Under such
conditions it hardly seems worth while to build at all. So it is with
nations the world over. When they are snarling jealously at one
another's heels, and coveting what the other possesses, how can
progress be made?"

"I suppose when they get mad they forget about the work of the world,"
Tim announced.

"That is just the trouble," agreed his mother. "Engrossed in their own
little squabbles, they lose sight of the splendid big thing they were
put here to do. In other words they forget their job, which is to make
the world and themselves better."

Slowly she glanced from one earnest face into another.

"Well, I've read you quite a sermon, haven't I?" smiled she. "And it
was all because of the Tartary lamb. Now suppose we talk of something
else--Christmas. It will be here now before we know it. What shall we
do this year? Shall it be a tree? Or shall we hang our stockings, go
without a tree, and put the money into a Christmas dinner?"

Inquiringly she studied her children's faces.

"I suppose a tree does cost quite a lot before you are through with
it," reflected the prudent Mary.

"And we have the municipal tree in the park, anyway," Carl put in in an
attempt to be optimistic.

"But that tree isn't ours, our very own tree," Tim began to wail.

"It is lots bigger than any tree we could have, Timmie," asserted his
older brother. "And think of the lights! They are all electric. We
couldn't have lights like those here at home."

"I know," grieved Tim. "But it isn't our tree--just ours--in our
house."

"A Christmas tree costs ever so much money, Timmie," Mary explained
gently. "Mother can't buy us a tree always and a dinner, too."

"Oh, I could manage a small tree, perhaps," interrupted Mrs. McGregor,
touched at seeing the child so disappointed. "There are little ones at
the market."

"But I don't want a little one," objected Tim stubbornly. "I want a
big, big Christmas tree."

"Big as the ceiling--big as Mulberry Court," interrupted Martin,
extending his chubby arms to their full length.

"I wants a big tree, too," lisped Nell.

Mrs. McGregor sighed to herself. Evidently it was not going to be as
easy to coax her flock away from their established traditions as she
had at first supposed. Each year she had made a stupendous effort to
keep Christmas after the old fashion; and each season the ceremony,
before it was over, made appalling inroads on her slender purse. This
time it had been her plan to curtail expenses and put what was spent
into the more substantial and lasting things. But now as she glanced
about her her heart misgave her. Even Carl and Mary, valiantly as they
fought for economy, and grown up though they were, could not altogether
conceal the fact that they were disappointed; and as for the younger
children, they were on the brink of tears.

"Well, we won't decide to-day," announced their mother diplomatically.
"We will think it over until to-morrow. By that time perhaps some way
can be found----"

A knock at the door interrupted her.

"Run to the door like a good boy, Timmie," said she. "Very likely it's
the boy from the corner grocery with the bundles of wood I ordered."

Tim rose with importance. Visitors to the fifth floor of Mulberry Court
were so few that to admit even so prosaic a one as the grocer's boy
never ceased to thrill him.

To-day, however, it was not the grocer's boy who stood peering at him
from the dim hallway. In fact, it was no one he had ever seen before. A
little old man stood there, a man with ruddy cheeks, a stern mouth, and
blue eyes whose sharpness was softened by a moist, far-away expression.
From beneath a nautical blue cap strayed a wisp or two of white hair.
Otherwise, he was buttoned to his chin in a great coat, fastened with
imposing brass buttons, dulled by much fingering.

Apprehensive at the sight, Tim backed into the room. Brass buttons, in
his limited experience, meant either firemen or policemen and either of
these dignitaries was equally terrifying.

"You don't know your Uncle Frederick, do you, sonny?" observed the
stranger.

The voice, more than the words, brought Mrs. McGregor to her feet in an
instant, and what a rush she made for the door! Gauze, spangles,
scissors, and spool flew in all directions and the children, deciding
that some unprecedented evil had befallen, stampeded after her.

Open-mouthed, they watched, while in the arms of the little old
gentleman she laughed, cried, and uttered broken nothings quite
unintelligible to anybody.

"Who ever would have thought to see you, Frederick!" gasped she at
last, as wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron she dragged her
visitor into the room. "Children, come here one by one and speak to
your Uncle James Frederick Dillingham. This is Carl, the oldest one--a
good boy as ever lived (if he is always tearing his clothes). The next
is Mary; she's going on thirteen and is quite a little housekeeper even
now. Timmie, who let you in, is nine. And here are Martin and Nell--the
mites! James Frederick is asleep but when you see him you'll see the
finest baby you ever set your two eyes on. Kiss your uncle, children.
You know it's him you have to thank for many, many things."

Slowly the children advanced, wonder (and if the truth must be told) no
small measure of chagrin in their crestfallen countenances.

Was this apparition the fairy prince of their imaginings--this little
gray man with his long coat and oilskin bundle? Why, he might be Mike
Carrigan, the butcher; or Davie Ryan, the proprietor of the fruit
stand, for anything his appearance denoted. Their dreams were in the
dust. Still, youth is hopeful and they did not quite let go the
expectation that when the long coat that disguised him had been removed
and the magic bundle opened Uncle Frederick Dillingham would issue
forth in a garb startling, resplendent, and more in accordance with
their mental pictures of him. But to their profound disappointment,
when the great coat was tossed aside, it concealed no ermine-robed
hero; nor was there crown or scepter in the bundle. Instead there stood
in their midst a very plain, kindly little man arrayed in a shiny suit
of blue serge that was almost shabby. The buttons, to be sure, had
anchors on them; but they were dim, lusterless old anchors that looked
as if they had been sunk in the depths of the sea until their golden
glory had been tarnished by the washings of a million waves.

Nell eyed him and at length began to cry.

"Policeman!" she whimpered, hiding her face in her mother's skirt.

"Hush, girlie! Don't be silly," protested Mrs. McGregor hurriedly.
"Your uncle is no policeman, though he may get one if you don't stop
that noise."

At that the little old man laughed a hearty, ringing laugh, so good to
hear that in spite of themselves the whole family joined in it. After
that, everything was easy. Uncle James Frederick Dillingham tucked his
coat, cap, and bundle away in a corner and allowed his sister to seat
him in the rocking-chair before the stove.

"Put another shovelful of coal on the fire, Carl," said she briskly.
"And Mary, do you slip out to the market and fetch home a beefsteak and
some onions. You were ever fond of a steak smothered in onions,
Frederick. Timmie, you shall set the table with a place for your uncle
Frederick at the head, remember. And Nell, trot to the shed, darling,
and bring mother a nice lot of potatoes. Go softly so not to waken
James Frederick."

Promptly her host sprang to obey her.

"Well, well, Brother," murmured she, "I've scarcely got my breath yet.
I never was so surprised in all my born days as to see you standing
there on the mat! Wherever did you come from? We've not heard from you
for weeks and I had begun to fear something might have gone amiss."

Captain Dillingham patted her hand with his horny one.

"We had a long trip home, Nellie, because of strong head winds,"
explained he. "Then, too, there were ports to stop at and cargo to
unload. Add to this a fracas with the engine and you'll readily
understand why I had only scant time for letter writing. I never was
any too good at it, at best, you know."

"Men never are," returned Mrs. McGregor cheerily over her shoulder as
she hustled out of the pantry with a clean tablecloth. "But it matters
not now; the ship is safe in port and you are here in time for
Christmas--a miracle that's never happened before in all my memory."

"But----," began her brother doubtfully.

"But what? Surely you're not going to say you are putting straight off
to-morrow for India or some other heathen spot! No shipowners would be
so heartless as to ask you to do that. Besides, very like the
_Charlotte_ must need repairing after such a stiff trip. Oughtn't her
seams to be caulked or something?"

Captain Dillingham's eyes twinkled and the corners of his mouth curved
upward.

"You're quite knowing in nautical matters, Nellie," observed he with
amusement. "Aye, the _Charlotte_ will have to lay to and be
overhauled some. She had a tough voyage. Still, she don't mind it much.
She's a thoroughbred that takes what comes without whimpering. That's
the lady of her. I never have to offer excuses or apologies for
her--no, siree! Tell her what you want done and you can count on her
doing it every time."

"I'm sorry you didn't have a better voyage home," ventured his sister.

"Oh, the voyage was all right enough. You can't expect a marble floor
to sail on in December. Indeed a trip such as that would be almost too
tame for me. I like the kick of the sea. Still, heavy winds that hold
you back all the way over as these held us, are trying. You make but
slow progress against them. Nevertheless the _Charlotte_ put up a
stiff fight and don't you forget it."

"Had you any storms this trip?"

"Storms? Oh, I believe we did strike a gale or two, now I come to think
of it. I recall there was a nasty typhoon in the Indian Ocean that kept
us busy for a while. But such happenings are all in the day's work and
after they are over are forgotten."

Carl, busy at his task of slicing the bread, gasped. Gales and
typhoons! And the Indian Ocean to boot! And his uncle mentioned them
all as if they were no more than flies on the wall. He had seen the
Indian Ocean on the map--an area of blue edged about with patches of
pink, green, and yellow; but he certainly had never expected to meet in
the flesh anybody who had sailed its waters.

Uncle Frederick Dillingham suddenly began to take on in his eyes an
aspect quite new; an aspect so alluring that when contrasted with the
myth of purple and ermine the latter tradition shriveled into something
very minor in importance. Was not the master of a ship a far more
intriguing character than a dull old king who did nothing but sit on a
crimson velvet throne and wave a scepter?

"You'll have much to tell us, Frederick," declared Mrs. McGregor,
putting the potatoes into the oven. "The children know little of
foreign lands. Nor do I know as much of them as I would. 'Twill be
grand to hear where you've been and what you've seen."

"Did you go to China, Uncle Frederick?" Carl inquired timidly.

"Aye! And to India and Japan, laddie."

The boy's eyes glowed with excitement.

"Oh, wouldn't I like to sail on a big ship to some place that was
different from Mulberry Court!" cried he.

"The places I've been in lately were certainly different from Mulberry
Court!" sighed Captain Dillingham. "And perhaps had you seen them you
would be as glad as I am to be at Mulberry Court."

"Maybe! I'd like a peep at something else, though."

"Maybe some day you'll be having it," returned the sea captain
jocosely. "Who knows! I may be taking you to India with me when you're
older."

"_Frederick!_" came from Mrs. McGregor in a horrified tone.

"You wouldn't like to see the shaver starting off for India, Nellie?
And why not?" laughed her brother. "India is a fine country. Besides,
traveling the world is a great way to study its geography. I'll be
willing to wager, now, that not one of these older children, though
they have been to school since they were knee high, could tell me
offhand where the Suez Canal is."

Consternation greeted the assertion and there was dead silence.

"There! What did I tell you?" returned Captain Dillingham triumphantly.
"And should I try them on the Bay of Biscay or the Ganges it would be
no better."

The stillness was oppressive.

"Aren't there--didn't I read somewhere that there are crocodiles in the
Ganges?" Carl managed to stammer.

His uncle chuckled.

"There's hope for you, son," he answered. "To know there are crocodiles
in the Ganges is something. Perhaps I shall make a tourist of you yet.
But you will have to know a little more about this globe of ours before
I can do it, I'm afraid."

"I hate geography," announced Tim, who had been listening and now with
disconcerting frankness proclaimed his aversion in no uncertain terms.
"All it is is little squares of color."

Captain Dillingham glanced toward his sister and met her wry smile.

"That's what books do for you," acclaimed he. "They make the romance of
the Orient nothing but patchwork." Then to Tim he continued, "I can
teach you better geography than that, laddie. Countries aren't just
little pieces of pink, yellow, or blue paper laid together. They are
people, rivers, mountains; tea, sugar, and cotton; ivory, elephants,
and carved temples."

The children had drawn closer around his knee.

"Tell us about the elephants," pleaded Tim, with shining eyes.

"There, you see! You are begging already for a lesson in
geography--much as you dislike it!" teased his uncle.

"There can be no geography lessons now," objected Mrs. McGregor. "The
steak is done and mustn't be spoiled with waiting. Show your uncle
where to sit, Mary. And, Timmie, bring the salt. It's been forgotten.
You'll have to bring a chair from my room, Martin. Remember James
Frederick and go on your toes."

"Now, Frederick," smiled his sister mischievously, "admit that even in
India you've seen nothing better than this beefsteak."

"'Twill take no coaxing to make me admit that, my dear," returned
Captain Dillingham. "Not all the sultans of the east could produce a
dish as royal as this one."

CHAPTER VIII

THE ROMANCE OF COTTON

From the moment of Uncle James Frederick Dillingham's arrival there
began for the McGregor children an era of delight. The newly found
relative, they soon discovered, was not only all they had pictured, but
more--far more!

He did not, it is true, actually live at Mulberry Court, for because of
the crowded conditions of the McGregor home he took a room near-by;
nevertheless he might as well have lived there for he only used his own
room to sleep in and stow away his luggage. Each morning just before
breakfast his step would be heard on the stairs and off would race the
children in merry rivalry to see who would reach the door first and
have the honor of admitting him. Once inside the cosy kitchen he made
it his headquarters and it did not take long to find out that he was a
valuable asset there.

For example who could fry fish so deliciously as he? And who could make
such chowder? And as for washing dishes and wiping them he was quicker
than any of the young folks. To behold an officer in gold braid
presiding at the dishpan at first caused a protest from Mrs. McGregor;
but when the little old man asserted that it was a treat to be inside a
home and handle a mop and soap-shaker what could one say? So he mixed
the foaming suds and dabbled in them up to his elbows, and when his
sister witnessed the general frolic into which his leadership suddenly