too, aren't there high buildings to topple over; flagpoles to snap
asunder, signs to blow down; chimneys to shower their bricks on your
head; not to mention the death-dealing currents that come through
telegraph and telephone wires? Add to this threatening collection trees
and snow-slides and slippery pavements and you have quite a list of
horrors. Danger! Why, the land is nothing but maelstrom of catastrophes
compared with which the serenity of the open sea, with nothing but its
moon and stars overhead, is an oasis of safety. Of course there are
certain things you must be on your guard against while on the
water--fogs, icebergs and gales. But where can you find a spot under
God's heaven entirely free from the possibilities of mishap of some
sort? I'd a hundred times rather take the risks the sea holds than run
my chances on land. Besides, aren't we a city, same as you? Just
because we are afloat and you can boast the solid ground under your
feet is it a sign we are not citizens with laws and duties? with the
wireless singing its messages to us wherever we go we certainly are not
cut off from the rest of the world."

For a moment he paused to catch his breath.

"No, siree!" continued he. "We folks on shipboard simply belong to a
floating republic, that's all. It's our country same as this is yours,
and we love it quite as much as you do."

"I never thought of the ocean that way," Mary returned with a
thoughtful smile. "It's always seemed to me a big, big place without
any--any streets or----"

"But we have streets, lassie," cried her uncle, instantly catching her
up. "Regular avenues they are. Travel 'em and you'll meet the passing
same as you would were you to drive along a boulevard. They are the
ocean highways, the latitudes and longitudes found to be the best paths
between given countries. In some cases the way chosen is shorter; or
maybe experience has proved it to be freer from fog or icebergs.
Anyhow, it has become an accepted thoroughfare and is as familiar to
seafaring men as if it had been smoothed down with a steam roller and
had a signpost set to mark it. Never think, child, of the ocean as a
lonely, uncharted waste of water. It is a nice quiet place with as much
sociability on it as a man wants. You don't, to be sure, rub elbows
with your neighbors as you do ashore; but on the other hand you don't
have to put up with their racket. Pleasant as it is to be on land the
hum of it gets on my nerves in time, and I am always thankful to be
back aboard ship."

"We'll miss you dreadfully, Frederick," his sister remarked.

"But remember I'll be putting in at various ports off and on," returned
the captain, "and be mailing you letters, postals and trinkets of one
sort and another. Moreover, you're all going to write to me, I
hope--even Martin. For if there's any one thing a sailor man looks
forward to it's the mail that awaits him in a foreign port. I must own
that with all the virtues the sea possesses the landlubber has the best
of us on mail service. Rural free delivery is one blessing we can't
boast. No blue-coated postmen come sauntering down our watery streets
to drop letters and papers into our boxes. We have to call for these
ourselves same as you might have to go to a post-office here ashore if
the government wasn't as thoughtful and generous as it is. Our
post-offices are sometimes pretty far apart, too, and I'm driven to
confess we don't always get our mail as often as we'd like. That's one
of the outs of seafaring. So when we do touch shore and go looking for
letters it is disappointing not to find any. Don't forget that. After
I'm gone you will get busy with your school, and your sewing, and your
fun, and you will not think so often about Uncle Frederick." He put up
a warning hand to stay the protest of his listeners. "You won't mean
to," continued he kindly, "but you'll do it all the same. It's human
nature."

This sinister prediction, however, did not prove true.

For days after Captain Dillingham said good-by to Baileyville, Mulberry
Court, the Harlings and the McGregors were inconsolable.

"The house isn't the same with Uncle Frederick gone, is it, Mother?"
commented Mary.

"No, it isn't. We miss him very much."

"I should say we did! Such a lot of things happen all the time that I
want to tell him," Carl broke in. "Why, only this morning the teacher
gave me a book to look up something and the first page I opened to had
a lot about foreign trade. A month ago I wouldn't have cast my eye over
it a second time but now, because of Uncle Frederick, that sort of
thing interests me. So I read along down the left-hand column and what
should it be about but the first spinning mills! I wished Uncle
Frederick could have read it."

"You must write him about it," flashed Mary. "What did it say, Carl?"

"Oh, I don't know," her brother answered awkwardly. "I'm not sure that
I can remember exactly. I wasn't learning it to recite."

"But you read it, didn't you?"

"Sure I did, Miss Schoolmarm!"

"Then you must remember some of it," Mary persisted.

"Oh, I remember scraps of it. It said at the outset that nobody really
knew when people began to spin. Most likely they got the idea from
pulling out fibers of cotton or wool long as they could make them with
their fingers, and then twisting the stuff together into larger and
longer threads. As they could do this better if they had the end
fastened to something, they got the notion of using a stick or some
sort of spool or spindle to wind the thread up on as they made it. They
would go walking round with a mass of material under one arm and this
crude spindle with the thread on it under the other. The book said that
even now in certain foreign countries there were peasants who did this.
It was during the reign of Henry VII that spindles and distaffs first
appeared in England. Afterward people improved on the idea and made
spinning wheels. The people of India had had these long before, so you
see they weren't really new; but they were new to England. To judge
from the book they weren't any great shakes of spinning wheels; still
they were better than nothing. Later on the English got finer ones such
as were used in Savoy and these not only had a spindle but a flyer and
bobbin. It was most likely these Saxony wheels that started inventors
trying to make something that would be better yet."

Holding the plug he was whittling for his double-runner up to the
light, Carl halted.

"I think you've done pretty well, son," remarked his mother over the
top of her sewing.

"I think so too," Carl returned with unaffected candor. "I had no idea
when I started that I could remember so much. I guess it was because I
was interested in the story and wasn't trying to learn it. When you
think you're learning things, you get to saying them over and over
until by and by what little sense there is in 'em seems to evaporate.
At least, that's the way it is with me. If I could just read and not
keep thinking that I was trying to learn I'd get on twice as well. Even
this page of stuff would have _looked_ different if I'd been going to
learn it. You see, you never have the chance to learn what you want to
at school; it's always what they pick out for you. Naturally you don't
care as much about it as you would if it was what you'd chosen
yourself."

Mrs. McGregor could not resist smiling in sympathy with this philosophy
of education, novel as it was.

"Now what the teacher sent me to look up in that book," went on Carl,
"was some old foreign treaty. Of course I read it over because she made
me. But do I remember a line of it? Nix! I told her what the book said
as fast as I could, so to get it off my soul before I forgot it. I
don't see what she cared about it for anyway, for it didn't seem to
hitch up to anything. But this spinning business hitched right up to
Uncle Frederick, Hal Harling and what we've been talking about. I don't
see why Miss Dewey couldn't have let me alone to learn about that."

"Probably she didn't dream you were interested in it," said Mary. "How
should she, pray?"

"I know it. I suppose she didn't," answered Carl with fairness. "She
certainly is no mind reader; and I didn't mention it."

"Then don't go blaming poor Miss Dewey," Mary retorted. "Besides, what
kind of a school would she have if every child in it refused to learn
anything but what he cared about. She would have fifty kids all going
fifty different ways."

Carl sighed. Plainly the flaws of the educational system were too many
for him. Nevertheless he attempted a modest defense of his theory.

"No, she wouldn't," contradicted he. "Some of 'em don't want to learn
anything anyhow, and since they have to they are as well pleased to
learn one thing as another. Billie Tarbox, for instance, hasn't any
preferences; he just hates all highbrow stuff alike. And the Murphys
and Jack Sullivan wouldn't care a hurrah what they learned. All Jack
wants to do when he grows up is to run a steam roller and if he can do
that he'll be perfectly satisfied."

"But he'll have to learn something before he can," observed Mrs.
McGregor.

"No, he won't, Ma. Mike Finnerty who lives in his block runs one and he
doesn't know a thing," Carl replied simply.

"On the contrary, I think you'll find Mr. Michael Finnerty knows much
more than you give him credit for," retorted Mrs. McGregor. "He
probably knows more than he himself realizes. He may not have learned
about engines out of books; but if not he has learned about them from
actual contact with them. All learning does not come from between book
covers, sonny. Experience is a wonderful teacher. Books simply give us
the same result without making us stumble along to learn everything
ourselves. They are somebody else's experience done up in a little
bundle and handed to us as a shorter cut. Mr. Michael Finnerty has had
to take the long way round to get his education, that is all. For
education is nothing but a training which enables us to live and be
useful to others; and if when we're through we can't do that all the
book learning in the world isn't going to be worth much to us."

"Why, Mother, I thought you were terribly keen on schools," ejaculated
Mary, aghast.

"So I am, my dear. A fine mind thoroughly trained is a glorious tool;
but far too often people forget that it is simply a tool. Just
sharpening and polishing it and never turning it to account for other
people isn't what it was made for. Learn all you can so you will be
able to help the world along the better. But don't just soak up and
soak up what books tell you and then store it away in your head like so
much old lumber."

"But what can you do with what you read, Ma?" Carl questioned, laying
down his whittling and facing his mother.

"Precisely what you have been doing this morning, for one thing," was
the quiet answer. "Pass it on to somebody else who hasn't read it. Mary
and I, for example, hadn't read about England and the early spinning
wheels. We hadn't the time to; nor had we the book. You've managed to
tell us quite a lot."

"Maybe I could tell you some more, if you wanted me to," said Carl,
urged on by altruistic impulse.

"Of course we do," his mother replied.

Carl took a long breath and considered thoughtfully.

"Well, what knocked me was that at first the English government didn't
want any cotton cloth made," began he.

"Why not? I should think they would have been delighted!" Mary put in.

"Oh, the English made a lot of woolen goods, and they had a hunch that
cotton cloth might cut into the trade for wool and fustians. So
Parliament passed a law placing a five-pound fine on any of the British
who wore things made of colored calico. As the restriction also covered
the use of painted, dyed or stenciled cottons it knocked out all these
products for hangings, bedspreads, or coverings."

"How horrid of them!" said Mary indignantly.

"They were darned afraid of their trade being interfered with, you
see," explained her brother. "I believe you could use an all blue
calico and of course there was no objection to making cotton cloth into
underclothes; also you were allowed to use a cloth woven of cotton and
wool. But you mustn't wear any pretty figured cotton dresses. When the
people heard that they kind of rose up, and when the government found
out they wouldn't stand for such a law, in 1736, after amending it,
they made another one letting folks wear any kind of decorated cloth
they had a mind to, so long as its warp was entirely of linen yarn.
This provided England with a market for her flax. But once the law was
passed the delighted manufacturers began to turn out colored cloth by
the bushelful, making any amount more than they could sell just because
they were allowed to. This led to another difficulty--where were they
going to get enough linen warp? The cottagers who worked at home with
their little spinning wheels could not begin to turn out the supply
that was needed, and weavers of cloth went traveling everywhere over
England buying up all the linen thread people would sell and begging
for more. And not only did they want linen warp but they wanted it
stronger and coarser so they could weave heavier cloth. Now the
spinning wheels only turned out single thread. What was to be done?"

"Well, what was to be done?" echoed Mary.

"It was trying to find an answer to all this weaving muddle that set
John Kay to inventing his flying shuttle," replied Carl. "Until then it
had taken two people to send the heavy shuttles with the warp on them
across the looms. His new flying shuttle did the same work with only
one person to operate it. You'd think that an improvement in weaving,
wouldn't you; and you'd have the right, if you worked out the idea, to
believe the weavers would be pleased?"

"Certainly," returned his mother.

"Well, instead of being pleased, the workmen were crazy," Carl
announced.

"Why?"

"Because they were such blockheads they were afraid Kay's invention was
going to put them out of their jobs. In fact, they got so soured on
poor old Kay that his life was actually in danger and he had to get out
of England. There's gratitude for you!" concluded the boy with a shrug.

"But later on they learned better, I suppose, and sent for him to come
back," Mary suggested. "That's the way people always do."

"These people didn't," was Carl's grim retort. "Not on your tin-type!
They never got Kay back again in spite of all he'd done for them.
Instead, he died somewhere abroad without receiving much of anything
for his invention. Wouldn't that make you hot? In the meantime, about
1738, a chap called Lewis Paul got out a double set of rollers that
would draw out thread and twist it--a stunt previously done by hand. So
it went. Here and there men all over England, knowing the need of
better spinning devices, went to it to see what they could do. John
Wyatt, who, like Paul, was a Birmingham native, tried spinning by means
of rollers; and for ever so long it was a question whether it was he or
Paul who should be credited with the invention of the roller and flyer
machine. After twenty years I believe Paul was granted the patent. In
point of fact, though, Arkwright thirty years before had tried to get a
patent on spinning by rollers, and no doubt both Lewis Paul and John
Wyatt got the suggestion from him. Anyhow, the idea spread like
wildfire and immediately no end of people went to work fussing with
rollers, flyers, and spindles. As a result, many small things were
added to improve the spinning contrivances in use at the time. Then in
1764, or thereabouts, along came James Hargreaves, a Lancashire
Englishman, with a machine that would spin eleven threads at once."

His listeners gave a little gasp.

"That was some stride ahead, wasn't it?" commented Carl, as proudly as
if he himself had done the deed. "Yes, siree! Hargreaves's spinning
jenny was a big step forward. And as usual it raised a row. When he got
it all perfected five years later and went to take out a patent on it,
his right to it was questioned and his life made miserable. But,
anyhow, people couldn't say he built on Arkwright or Paul, for whether
they liked it or not they had to admit his idea was quite new. His
jenny only spun cloth rovings, however. The rovings had to be prepared
first; that is, the cotton had to be carded and given its first twist.
After that Hargreaves was ready for it and could lengthen, twist, and
spin into yarn eleven threads of it."

"I hope the ungrateful workmen did not get after him as they did after
John Kay," Mary murmured.

"They did! At least, although they did not drive him out of England
they drove him out of Lancashire. So he went to Nottingham; and after
arming himself with his patent he and a Mr. James built a spinning mill
there, one of the first to be built in England."

"That must have made his fortune and repaid him for all his hard
labor," remarked Mrs. McGregor, as she held up a violet cloud of
spangled tulle and examined it critically.

"The book said he didn't make much money," Carl announced. "He wasn't
as poor as John Kay and did not die in want; but he certainly never
became rich."

"I suppose now that they had spinning factories England was satisfied,"
said Mary.

"Satisfied?" repeated Carl with scorn. "Satisfied because there was one
little measly spinning factory? You bet your life people weren't
satisfied! To be sure some of the hardest of the inventing was done.
But don't for a minute imagine you are through with Richard Arkwright.
He was still on the job."

"You told us about him before."

"Trying to get a patent on spinning by rollers? Yes, I did. Well, he
was still alive and of course when everybody was talking about spinning
he couldn't help hearing the gossip even if he did happen to be a
barber. In fact while he traveled round buying and selling hair for
wigs he must have met no end of people and talked with them, so I guess
he heard more of the news of the day than did lots of other men.
Barbers always seem to be sociable chaps. He was quite a mechanic, too,
in his way; machinery had always interested him."

"In spite of his making wigs and toupees for ladies and gentlemen?"
laughed Mrs. McGregor mischievously.

"Sure, Ma! He had been born in Lancashire just as Hargreaves had and so
he probably was particularly interested in Hargreaves. When anybody
from your own part of the world does anything smart you always are all
ears about it, you know. So Arkwright found out all he could by
gossiping about Hargreaves's spinning jenny, and no one was quicker to
see what such an invention would mean to England than he. The idea was
almost like a magnet to him. He hunted up Mr. Highs, who had
experimented a lot with spinning machinery, and talked with him; he
also met John Kay, who at one time had helped Highs. And because he was
such an intelligent listener and seemed to understand machinery so well
these men babbled to him about their hobby. Having heard all they had
to say Arkwright went off by himself and set quietly to work to try out
on a small scale certain notions of his own. These notions had to do
with spinning cotton by drawing rollers, and they worked perfectly.
That was enough for him. He announced his success, got his patent, was
knighted by the crown, and became rich. How's that for a yarn? Isn't it
like the story of Puss-In-Boots?"

"It is certainly magical," declared Mrs. McGregor, who had dropped her
work in her absorption. "I am glad, too, to know there was one inventor
who prospered."

"I am afraid he was the only one--at least of those interested in
spinning," replied Carl gravely.

"All the others both before and after him lost out so far as money
went."

"Who did come after Arkwright?" queried Mary.

"Crompton--Samuel Crompton," was the prompt reply. "He was a little boy
when Arkwright was tooting round the country trading hair and wigs. The
two men may even have happened to see one another somewhere. That
wouldn't be impossible, you know. Anyway, during the time that
Arkwright was fighting the right to his roller patent; going into
partnership with rich men who could finance his schemes; and building
his chain of mills at Nottingham, Cromford, and Matlock, Crompton was
growing up. As some of these mills were worked by horse power and some
by water power, the name of 'water frame' clung to Arkwright's
invention. Crompton, like everybody else who lived at the time, saw the
rivalry between Hargreaves's jenny and Arkwright's water frame. It was
of course silly that there should have been rivalry, for the two
machines did quite different sorts of work. Arkwright's water frame was
better for making the warp and long threads of cloth; and Hargreaves's
jenny turned out better weft, or the kind of thread that went from side
to side. It was only a matter of the sort of thread you needed,
understand."

"Then they certainly needn't have been jealous of one another,"
commented Mrs. McGregor.

"Fortunately in time they found that out and realized that each loom
had its advantages; to-day both are used--one for one purpose, one for
another. But no matter how many enemies Arkwright had everybody,
whether they liked him or not, was compelled to admit that he gave the
spinning industry a tremendous boost and did more toward starting our
present factory idea than did any one else. Not only was he a tireless
worker, but he was quick as a flash to see what was needed. Maybe he
wasn't any too scrupulous whose property he took; but at least he took
the things he seized more for the public good than his own, I really
believe. For instance, there was Lewis Paul's carding engine; he
introduced that into Lancashire and added to it a stripping comb, or
doffer, that made it about fifty per cent. better than it ever had been
before. That is what he did to everything he touched. He swooped down
on any machine he saw and then proceeded to improve it. It didn't
matter to him who it belonged to. Of course you can't do that, even if
you are an inventor," grinned Carl. "Naturally it got Arkwright in
wrong and he was given some pretty hard names. Still he did a lot of
good for all that. And, anyway, whatever he was, I take my hat off to
him because he began to study writing, spelling, and arithmetic when he
was fifty years old. That gets me!"

"Poor soul! He probably had no chance for an education when he was
younger," remarked Mrs. McGregor.

"No, he hadn't. But picture it! Jove! If I had gone that long without
books, and had been able to invent all sorts of things into the
bargain, darned if I wouldn't have stuck it out," Carl said.

"But you told us Arkwright became rich and was knighted," replied Mrs.
McGregor. "No doubt this resulted in his meeting educated people,
gentlemen and ladies, in whose company he felt ashamed, uncomfortable,
and at a disadvantage."

"I'd feel that way, wouldn't you?" nodded Mary. "I do feel so even when
I am with Uncle Frederick, and my teacher, and--and you, Mother."

"Don't include me, dear," protested her mother sadly. "Alas, I know
little enough. But it does help you to understand how that poor,
hard-working Richard Arkwright suffered. Often, I'll wager, he was
angry at himself for his lack of education even though it was not his
fault. I don't wonder, snubbed as he probably was at times, that he
determined he would learn something."

"His hard-earned education did not do him much good, Mother, for he
died when he was sixty," said Carl.

"Well, at least he lived long enough to see his success," Mary put in
brightly.

"He was luckier than Crompton," replied her brother.

"Oh, tell us about Crompton. Do you remember anything about him?" Mary
inquired.

"Crompton was one of the most important of the spinning inventors,"
continued Carl. "But he did not set out to be an inventor any more than
Arkwright did. To be sure he wasn't a barber or anything as ordinary as
that. He was a musician, a person of quite another sort, you see. His
family were better bred and started him out with a good education--the
very thing Arkwright lacked. Crompton might easily have mixed with the
class Arkwright wanted to mix with but he wasn't as good a mixer.
Instead of gossiping with everybody he met, as Arkwright had done,
Crompton kept by himself and lived quietly at home with his mother."

"A sensible lad!" Mrs. McGregor whispered.

"Maybe," grinned her son. "Still, it made people call Crompton
unsociable. I guess, though, most geniuses are that. They always seem
to be so in books; and Crompton certainly was a genius. He hadn't an
ounce of brain for business but he had no end of ideas; and it was
those that got him on in life. For you see, although the Cromptons were
what Ma would call 'gentle people', they were not rich. They were
comfortably off, though, and if the father had not died when the
children were small they might have been very well off indeed. As it
was, Mrs. Crompton had to help out the finances by carding, spinning,
and weaving cloth at home when her other work was done. Ever so many
other women did it, so it was considered an all right thing to do.
Since Kay's flying shuttle had made it possible to spin more stuff the
weavers, as I told you, were scouring the country for all the warp and
weft they could lay hands on, so everybody who could spin thread was
sure of a market. The prices offered, and the difficulties the weavers
were having to get material enough, were common talk at every English
cottage fireside. So of course it wasn't strange that Mrs. Crompton,
along with the rest of her neighbors, heard this gossip and also heard
about Hargreaves's spinning jenny. Now Samuel helped his mother to spin
evenings when he wasn't playing at the village theater and she decided
it would be nice to get one of these spinning jennies for him to use.
So she did, and it wasn't long before he could not only use it, but
could turn out weft enough for cloth to clothe the whole Crompton
family."

"Then I don't see but the Cromptons were nicely taken care of," Mary
announced.

"That wasn't the point, smartie!" her brother objected. "Of course they
were well enough off themselves, but the village of Bolton where they
lived was strong on its muslins and quilt materials and what the people
wanted was to be able to spin fine muslins such as were imported into
England from India and China. If such goods could be made by uneducated
Orientals why should not people as clever and ingenious as the English
make them?"

"Why, indeed?"

"They couldn't do it; I don't know why," answered Carl. "They just
could not contrive to draw fine enough thread. Of course Samuel
Crompton had always seen the Bolton goods since he was a little boy and
so knew as well as did everybody else in the town what a wonderful
thing it would be if finer thread could be made. So after his mother
got her spinning jenny for him he began to fuss round with it simply to
find out whether he could make it any better or not. He experimented
five years and at the end of that time he had made a 'muslin wheel'
that was something like Arkwright's water frame and something like
Hargreaves's jenny and yet wasn't like either of those things.
Therefore, as a joke, it was called a 'mule.'"

"Oh, I'm awfully glad he made it!" ejaculated the sympathetic Mary.
"Five years was such a long time to work. Wasn't it splendid of him!"

"Other people, I'm sorry to say, were not of your opinion," Carl
replied. "As I said before, the spinners and weavers were a crazy,
jealous lot. You remember how they treated Kay and Hargreaves? Well,
they hadn't improved any and were still just as mad at spinning
inventions and spinning inventors as they were before. Everything that
did away with hand labor was, they argued, an enemy and was going to
put them out of business."

"But how could they expect they were going to stop the progress of the
world?" asked Mrs. McGregor.

"They didn't think it was progress; they were just that stupid,"
returned Carl. "And I guess even if they had thought so it would have
been the same. They were determined to use nothing that reduced the
number of hand workers. So they set themselves to take out their
vengeance on all spinning machinery, and in order to put an end to it
mobs of workers went about smashing to atoms every spinning jenny they
could find that had more than twenty spindles."

"How nasty!" breathed Mary.

"How stupid!" rejoined her mother.

"Now, of course, Samuel Crompton wasn't going to have his new 'muslin
wheel' smashed to bits so he did not tell anybody what he had invented.
He simply took the thing to pieces and hid the parts round his
workroom. Some of them he put in the ceiling, some he tucked away under
the floor."

"Bully for him!" Mary cried. "It was a regular kid trick."

"I know it," agreed Carl. "He wasn't really a kid, though, because he
was twenty-seven years old at the time and was married and his wife had
just come to live at the big Crompton homestead. Well, after a little
while, things settled down and then Samuel Crompton dragged out the
parts of his hidden muslin wheel, put them together, and he and the
lady he had married went to work making the finest and strongest yarn
they could. Such fine thread had never before been made in all England
and you better believe when it began to appear it created a stir.
Everybody in Bolton went round trying to find out where it came from
and after the tidings spread about that the Cromptons were the people
who were producing the mysterious yarn, the town swelled with pride.
How was the thread made? That was the next question!"

"And the Cromptons didn't tell, of course."

"That's where you're wrong, Mary Ann! I wish they hadn't; but they
did."

"That was a pity," interrupted Mrs. McGregor.

"You'd have thought they would have been wise enough not to, wouldn't
you?" Carl observed. "But I told you Samuel Crompton had no great head
for business. He was trusting and decent, just the way Eli Whitney was.
He had no idea people would steal his invention. So when the mill
owners and factory folks came surging to his house, he not only let
them see the loom but even allowed some of them to try it when they
wrote out a promise or pledged their word that they would pay him for
the privilege."

Mrs. McGregor shook her head.

"I'm afraid," said she, "that was all he ever heard of the money."

"Of course it was, Ma! Evidently you know more about human nature than
poor Crompton did. He was utterly amazed when they wouldn't pay up. And
when there were others mean enough to hide in the room over his
workshop, bore holes in the floor, and spy down at the magic machine,
all was lost."

"He held no patent, then?"

"He hadn't one thing to protect him. The sharks just came down on him,
grabbed his idea, and walked away with it unmolested," answered Carl.

"Oh, that was pitiful--pitiful!" exclaimed Mrs. McGregor, laying aside
her work.

"It was a darn shame!" echoed her son.

"And the Cromptons never got any money at all?" asked Mary.

"Not then, anyhow."

"Well, at least Mr. Crompton had the joy of doing what he set out to
do--nobody could take that satisfaction away from him," mused Mrs.
McGregor.

"Yes, but would that have consoled you for finding that people were so
low-down?" answered Carl with scorn. "I'll bet that one fact
disappointed him more than the loss of the money. It would me."

"Greed, I regret to say, sonny, is at the bottom of most of the evils
of the world," retorted his mother sadly. "What finally became of the
Cromptons?"

"Oh, the whole thing got on Crompton's nerves and he moved to another
town where he buried himself," Carl answered. "After a while, though,
he came back to Bolton because he needed money and opened a little
factory there. It ran along for almost ten years, doing business on a
small scale. Imagine it! Then in 1800 some Manchester manufacturers
(who had probably got rich on his invention and whose consciences
troubled them most likely) collected a purse for him that his mill
might be enlarged. By this time as a result of various improvements
Crompton's idea had expanded until one of his looms had as many as
three hundred and sixty spindles, and another had two hundred and
twenty."

"And years before the spinners had destroyed those that boasted more
than twenty," commented Mary thoughtfully.

"I know it! Ironic, wasn't it? Poor old Crompton! He just didn't seem
to have any luck," asserted Carl.

"It wasn't want of luck, my dear, so much as want of wisdom--the wit to
grasp opportunity when it came," contradicted his mother.

"You mean 'there is a tide in the affairs of men', Ma, and all that?"
Carl grinned. "Who says I don't know Shakespeare when I meet him?
Anyhow, I guess Bill was right; he certainly was in this case. Even the
money the English government later collected and presented to Crompton
got dribbled away and lost in various unfortunate enterprises. Crompton
got poorer and poorer, and if it hadn't been that friends took care of
him he might almost have starved."

"And did his star never rise again?" inquired Mrs. McGregor.

"Never! He just died in poverty and left other people to grow rich on
what he had done."

"That is the world, I am afraid," was Mrs. McGregor's observation.
"Still he had given humanity a hand up and done a great service to his
generation. That knowledge was better than all the fortunes he could
have possessed."

"But he might so easily have had both, Ma," returned the practical
Carl. "I call the help to humanity slim comfort when you've been
cheated out of what should have been yours. I shouldn't even have been
grateful had I been Crompton for the fine monument they set up to his
memory long after he was dead. What they ought to have done was to
treat him square while he was alive to enjoy it."

"See that as you go through life you do not forget your own philosophy,
my son," cautioned his mother.

CHAPTER XV

TIDINGS

The following week brought a letter from Uncle Frederick and very
important the McGregors felt when they took it, adorned with its
English stamp, from the mail box in the hall. Mulberry Court did not
receive so many letters that the arrival of one was a routine affair.
No, indeed! When a real letter came to any of its residents the fact
was remarked upon by the recipient with a casualness calculated to veil
the pride he or she experienced.

Mrs. O'Dowd, for example, in passing through the hall would call
carelessly to one of her neighbors:

"I've just had a letter from my sister Jane in Fall River. Plague the
girl! What can she be writing to me about?"

Nevertheless, in spite of this ungracious observation Mrs. O'Dowd was
much pleased to be seen with the letter and overhear her friends
whispering among themselves:

"Julie O'Dowd had a letter from Jane to-day. It was in a blue envelope
and looked like quite a thick one. What do you suppose the girl had to
say? Most likely Julie will tell us by and by."

And sure enough! The prediction was a true prophecy, for before the day
was out Julie had made an errand to every flat in the house and before
leaving had read to each family extracts from the letter, interspersing
the paragraphs with a running line of comment concerning Jane and her
history since babyhood. By evening the letter had become blurred and
dingy with much handling and Julie could recite it from beginning to
end.

Yet for all the interest evoked by Julie's letters and the other rare
epistles that found their way into Mulberry Court these missives came
after all only from American cities which lay within a radius of a
hundred miles of Baileyville. They had not traveled far, any more than
had the persons to whom they were addressed. They were not letters
written on thin foreign paper and bearing unfamiliar postmarks and the
fascinating stamps of other nations. Only the McGregors could boast
such splendor as that.

Realizing this, Mrs. McGregor would have been short of human if she had
not been a wee bit self-conscious and forced to suppress from her voice
the satisfaction that echoed in it when she observed in off-hand
fashion:

"Oh, by the way, I had a letter to-day from my brother who is in
China."

China! It was a name to conjure with. What a medley of visions it
brought to the imagination!

And if you could not go to China, as none of Mulberry Court ever
expected to do, think of having a relative who did! And if you were not
blessed with such an illustrious connection why the next best thing was
to know some one who was. Even to know some one who had a brother in
China and who sent home letters from that magic realm imparted a
certain glory.

There was no denying the McGregors' foreign correspondence lent
prestige to Mulberry Court. Perhaps a Manila postmark was cut out and
bestowed on Mrs. Murphy, who tucked it away in a cracked cup and
displayed it on occasions to a visitor; or maybe the letter heading
from a Genoa hotel was given to Mrs. O'Dowd and furnished her with
conversation for a week. In outbursts of great generosity stamps or
postcards were donated to especially favored individuals.

Hence when on this particular morning the postman pressed Mrs.
McGregor's bell and she hastened down four flights to open her mail-box
a head protruded from almost every door as she made her way back
upstairs and there was ample opportunity for her to observe to
interested spectators, "I seem to have a letter from England. Judging
from the postmark, my brother must be in Liverpool."

In this case the admiration with which the name was repeated might not
have found so ringing an echo in Mrs. McGregor's voice. She had been to
Liverpool. For all that, however, she maintained a dignified front and
bore the letter upstairs, sinking with delight into the first chair
that blocked her path when she arrived and calling to her children:

"I've a letter from your Uncle Frederick, Timmie. Think of that! It
comes all the way from Liverpool with King George neat as a pin smiling
out of the corner of it. Yes, you may take the envelope, Carl, but
don't let the baby be fingering and tearing it. Show Martin the King's
picture. He's old enough now to learn how he looks. Mercy on us! What a
ream your Uncle Frederick has written. One would think it was a book! I
never knew him to write such a long letter in all my life. I hope he
isn't sick. Don't hang over my shoulder, Mary; it makes me nervous. And
don't let Nell come climbing up into my lap while I'm reading. Go to
Mary, like a good girl, darling; mother's reading a letter that came
all the way from England."

Thus did Mrs. McGregor preface the perusal of the document she held in
her hand. But when she had spread out the voluminous sheets and was
preparing to read them she was again interrupted:

"Now, Timmie, don't you and Carl start quarreling the first thing about
the stamp. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Who had the last one?
Carl? Then this one goes to you and there must be no more bickering
about it. If there is I shall keep it myself. One would think you boys
were a pair of Kilkenny cats the way you squabble with each other! Now
are you going to be quiet and listen to what Uncle Frederick has to say
or are you not? Then don't let me hear another yip out of either of
you."

Instantly the room was so still you could have heard a pin drop and to
an accompaniment of crisply crackling paper Mrs. McGregor began:

    LIVERPOOL, January 29, 1924.

    DEAR SISTER NELLIE--,

    Well, here I am in England with the Atlantic rolling between me and
    Baileyville. We had a splendid voyage with the sea as smooth as the
    top of your sewing-machine. (Ain't that like your Uncle Frederick
    to joke about the ocean! He's crossed it that number of times it's
    no more to him than the pond in the park. Well, I'm glad he had a
    smooth trip, anyway.)

    At Liverpool, where we docked, we ran into our first trouble, for
    there was a longshoremen's strike on and not a soul could he found
    to unload our cargo or lend a hand in loading us up again. For
    three days we were tied plumb to the wharf with nothing to do but
    twirl our thumbs. So having business at Manchester I decided to go
    up there and stay with a Scotchman who was my first mate years ago.
    (Now wasn't that nice!) Old Barney turned the town inside out he
    was so glad to see me (I'll wager he was!) and among other things
    took me through some big cotton mills where a nephew of his was
    working. For the benefit of the children I'm going to write a bit
    about them. I could not but wish on top of what we all talked about
    that they might have been with me to see how wonderful the spinning
    machinery is. Were it actually alive it could not work with more
    brains. (Your Uncle Frederick always will have his joke!)

    Indeed, the man who took us about told me that the self-acting mule
    of to-day, founded on the invention of Crompton, is a product of
    hundreds of minds and I can well believe it. It isn't the principle
    that is new, for apparently no one has ever improved on Crompton's
    idea; but since that time this machinist and that has added his bit
    to make the device more perfect. (Now ain't you glad you read about
    Crompton, Carl? This letter would have been Greek to you if you
    hadn't.) We saw mules as long as a hundred and twenty feet, and
    from nine to ten feet wide carrying some twelve or thirteen hundred
    spindles, and turning out about two yards of thread in a quarter of
    a minute. How is that? And all this clicking, humming, whirling
    machinery was operated by a man and a couple of boys. Carl, Tim and
    I could have run the thing had we known how.

    (Your Uncle Frederick don't forget you boys, you see!)

    They told me it was Richard Roberts, a Manchester man, who in 1830
    improved the self-acting mule and brought it to its present state
    of practical working order. I take off my hat to him and to those
    on whose ideas he built up this marvelous invention. The thing does
    everything but talk, and maybe it's as well off without doing that.
    Lots of folks would be.

    (I must read Julie O'Dowd that; it will make her laugh. It sounds
    so like your uncle you'd think him in the room this minute.)

    It draws out the carded cotton, puts in the necessary twist, and
    spins the thread, easy as rolling off a log, levers, wheels,
    springs, and a friction clutch all doing their part. I couldn't
    help thinking if each of us humans played his rôle as well, and did
    the thing given him to do as faithfully, how much better a world we
    should have. We don't begin to pull together for a result the way
    those wheels and pulleys did. Instead, each of us goes his own way
    never coöperating with his neighbor and in consequence we have a
    helter-skelter universe. (How true that is!)

    Nevertheless in spite of us--not because of us--the world advances.
    I sometimes wonder how it does it. Crompton, for instance, would
    scarcely have recognized his old mule that gave subsequent
    inventors their inspiration. Nor would Arkwright know his water
    frame could he see what has happened to it. (Mark you, Carl, how he
    speaks of Arkwright. All that would slide off you hadn't you read
    that book!)

    Of course there is a lot of rivalry between English and American
    spinning machinery and I found that some of the mills here have
    both.

    The reeling of the yarn after it is spun is done chiefly by women.
    I do not mean they make it up into skeins by hand; they operate the
    machinery that winds it; also that which makes it up into packages
    for the market. This process is also interesting to see. Strings
    are put in to separate the laps of the yarn; cardboards hold it in
    place; it is pressed flat; the bundle is tied; and the paper
    wrapper bearing the name of the manufacturer as well as any printed
    advertising he wishes to circulate, is whisked about it.

    I was a little surprised to find they made no spool cotton on any
    of these machines. Up to date no machine has been invented that
    will directly spin thread strong enough for sewing. All that has to
    be a separate process and therefore the yarn is taken to other
    machines where it is drawn finer and where several of the fine
    threads can be twisted into one. The spinners know just how many
    fine threads to put together to get certain sizes of cotton. To
    make number twelve, for example, they put together four strands of
    what is called 48's that have been doubled, or perhaps 50's, since
    the twist contracts the yarn.

    After this has been twisted the proper number of times the thread
    is passed over flannel-covered boards to be cleaned. Next it
    travels through a small, round hole something like the eye of a
    needle so that any knots or rough places can be detected. If the
    threads are found to be strong and without flaws two to half a
    dozen of them are put together in a loose skein and they are
    twisted in a doubling machine. Afterward the thread is polished,
    cleaned, and run off on spools or bobbins. That is the road
    Mother's spools of cotton have to travel before they get to her.
    How seldom we think of this or are grateful for it!

    There are in addition other ways of preparing cottons for
    embroidery, crocheting, or knitting, not to mention methods used to
    finish cotton yarn so that it will look like woolen, linen, or silk
    fiber. Because cotton is a cheaper material than any of these it is
    often mixed with them to produce cheaper goods. You would be amazed
    to see how ingenious manufacturers have become in turning out such
    imitations. Cotton, for example, is mercerized by passing it very
    rapidly through a gassing machine not unlike the flame of a Bunsen
    burner. Here all the fuzz protruding from it is burned away, and
    when polished and finished it looks so much like silk you would
    have trouble in telling whether it was or not. This sort of yarn is
    used to make imitation silk stockings and many other articles.

    Now I have told you quite a story, haven't I? And no doubt I have
    wasted good ink and paper doing it, for I presume Hal Harling could
    have told you the same thing quite as well if not a deal better.
    You read him this document and ask him to fill in the gaps. But at
    least even if Hal can improve on my tale I have demonstrated one
    thing and that is that I have remembered you whenever I have seen
    anything I thought you would be interested in.

    I send much love to each of the family. Tell Mary, Carl, and Tim to
    take good care of Mother and the babies. Be sure to greet for me
    the Harlings, O'Dowds, Murphys, and all the neighbors at Mulberry
    Court. We leave Liverpool for the Mediterranean next week and I
    will write you from Gibraltar or Naples. In the meantime do not
    forget the good ship _Charlotte_ or your affectionate

    FREDERICK.

"As if we could forget him!" whispered Mrs. McGregor, folding up the
many sheets and replacing them in their envelope. "It isn't all
children have the kind uncle you have. Carl, maybe you'd like to be
stepping over to the Harlings with this letter. Grandfather Harling
would delight to read it, I know. The days are long ones for him and
I'm sure he must miss your Uncle Frederick dropping in to bring him the
news."

Only too ready to comply with her request Carl rose.

"You can leave the letter until they all have seen it; then Hal or
Louise can bring it back. I want Mrs. O'Dowd to have it next. She's
mentioned by name in it and it will please her to read the words
herself."

Thus did Mulberry Court share its blessings!

CHAPTER XVI

A RELUCTANT ALTRUIST

As spring came and Carl was more out of doors playing ball and tramping
the open country his watchful eyes were continually scanning passing
motors for a possible glimpse of the mysterious red racing car and its
genial owner. The boy had never forgotten this delightful stranger or
quite abandoned the hope that he might sometime see him again. But,
alas, day succeeded day and never did any of the fleeting vehicles his
glance followed contain the person he sought. Neither was the search
for the sender of the Christmas baskets rewarded.

Spasmodically since mid-winter the Harlings and McGregors had cudgeled
their brains to discover this elusive good fairy until at length,
exhausted by fruitless effort, they agreed to inter Louise's
philanthropic Mr. X in a nameless grave. Despite that fact, however, he
was not forgotten and tender thoughts clustered about his memory.

In the meantime May followed on April's heels and presently June, with
her greenery and wealth of roses arrived, and then the startling
tidings buzzed through Baileyville that Mr. John Coulter was to be
married. The news thrilled young and old alike for was not young Mr.
Coulter the junior partner of Davis and Coulter; and was not Davis and
Coulter the heart and soul of Baileyville? Davis and Coulter meant the
mills and the mills meant the town itself. Without them there would
have been no village at all. Boys and girls, men and women toiled year
in and year out in the factories as their fathers and mothers, often
their grandfathers and grandmothers had done before them. If you were
not connected with Davis and Coulter's you were not of Baileyville's
aristocracy.

Hence it followed that the prospective marriage of Mr. John Coulter
could not but be an event concerning which the entire community
gossiped with eager and kindly interest. The lady was from New York,
people said, and Mr. John had met her while doing war work in France.
Both of them had large fortunes. But the fact that appealed to the
villagers far more than this was the intelligence that the wedding was
to take place at the old Coulter homestead and be followed by a fête to
which all the mill people and their families were to be invited. How
exciting that was! And how exultant were those whose connection with
the mills insured them a card to this mammoth festivity!

Rumor whispered there were to be gigantic tents with games and dancing;
bands of music; fireworks; and every imaginable dainty to eat. Some
even went so far as to assert there would be boats on the miniature
lake and a Punch and Judy show. Oh, it was to be a fête indeed!

For weeks the town talked of nothing else; and as Carl McGregor
listened to these stories his regrets at not being numbered among Davis
and Coulter's elect waxed keener and keener. One did not enjoy being
left out of a function of such magnitude, a party to which everybody
else was going. Not only did it make you feel lonely and stranded but
it mortified you to be obliged to own you were not of the happy band
included in so magnificent a celebration.

"Now if you'd only have let me take a job at the mills as I wanted to,
Ma, we might have been going to Mr. Coulter's party along with the rest
of the world," Carl bemoaned. "I always told you I ought to go into
those mills the way the other fellows do. But you wouldn't hear to it.
Now see what's come of it. We are left high and dry. I'll bet we are
the only people in Baileyville who are not invited to that party.
Everybody is to be there. If even one member of a family works at the
mill that lets in the bunch."

"Like the garden parties great families used to give their tenants in
the old country," Mrs. McGregor murmured reminiscently.

"I don't know about the old country," replied Carl ungraciously, "but
that is what Mr. Coulter is going to do--ask whole families. Gee, but
it makes me sore!"

"If your father had lived we would have been there," said the boy's
mother sadly. "Your father used to be very good friends with old Mr.
Coulter and he would have seen to it that none of this household was
left out. But Mr. John we never knew. He was always away
studying--first at school, then at college, and then in Europe. Later
he started in to be a lawyer in New York and but for the war and his
father's death he'd most likely be doing that now. But when the old
gentleman died Mr. John gave up everything else and came home to take
his place in the firm as his father had wished he should. Folks say
that in spite of not caring much for the mills at first he has
persisted at his job until he has become genuinely interested in them.
I honor him for it, too, for a business life wasn't his real choice. Of
course being away so much as he has he is little known among the mill
people yet; but evidently he means to settle down here and is anxious
to get better acquainted. This wedding party shows that."

"Well, there are some he won't get acquainted with," lamented Carl.

"If you mean us I reckon he can worry along without," Mrs. McGregor
retorted, with a twinkle in her eye. "He's managed to up to now."

"We're just as good as anybody else," her son blazed.

"Undoubtedly we are," was the good-humored answer. "Nevertheless we
won't be missed in a crowd like that."

"Don't you _want_ to go to the party, Ma?"

"Why, to tell the truth, I haven't had time to think much about it,
sonny--that is, not to be disappointed. I'm not pretending, though,
that so many parties come my way that a fine one such as this wouldn't
be a treat. I can't remember the day I've been to anything of the
sort. It's a quarter of a century or more, certainly--not since I was
a girl and went to the balls the gentry gave in Scotland."

"Oh, I do so wish we were going to Mr. Coulter's," Carl repeated.

"I'll not deny I'd like to," confessed his mother a bit wistfully.
"Still, were we to go what a stew we'd be in! It would mean days of
washing and ironing; new neckties and maybe shoes for you boys; and
hair ribbons and folderols for Mary and Nell. Before we were all
properly equipped it would cost a pretty penny. We'd have no right to
go without looking decent and being a credit to your father and to Mr.
Coulter who was good enough to ask us. So, you see, there are
advantages in everything. If we are not invited we shall have none of
the trouble and expense of it," concluded the woman philosophically.

"I wouldn't mind the trouble, Mother," burst out Carl. "I wouldn't
even care if I didn't have new shoes. Why, I'd go in my bathing suit."

Nodding her head his mother regarded him with withering censure.

"Yes, I believe you would," she agreed, "I believe you would--if you
were permitted. But how lucky it is you have a mother. Without me
you'd be disgracing your name, Mr. Coulter, Baileyville, and Mulberry
Court."

Carl grinned in sickly fashion.

"I'd be having the time of my life!" announced he, undaunted.

"Going to an affair like that in your bathing suit, you mean? I'm not
so sure about that. You are always begging to be allowed to wear that
costume or grumbling because you cannot wear it. Once, I recall, you
actually suggested wearing it to church on a hot Sunday. I'm sorely
tempted sometime to let you have your way and see what would come of
it. Think, for instance, of your sailing into Mr. John Coulter's
wedding party in a get-up like that. You'd be ducked in the pond in a
second."

"I'd be ready for it," was the provoking answer.

"Well, you aren't going to the Coulter party, as it happens, so
there'll be no question of what you'll wear," returned Mrs. McGregor
grimly.

"I know I'm not; but you don't have to rub it in, Ma," Carl answered.

"I didn't mean to rub it in, dear," was the gentle response. "I was
merely stating facts. Maybe it's as well, too, that we're not going
ourselves, for with the Sullivans, Murphys, and O'Dowds all invited
we'll have as much as we can do to get them all creditably rigged out.
I shall let Julie wear my black skirt--it just fits her; and Mrs.
Sullivan my best hat. My waist Mrs. Murphy shall take if I can get it
washed in time. Most likely, too, the O'Dowds will need your clothes
and Timmie's."

"Need my clothes!" Carl shouted.

"Certainly. Julie can't hope to provide things for all that big family
to appear in at once. Somebody will have to turn to and lend a helping
hand."

"But what'll I do while the O'Dowd boys wear my clothes?" wailed Carl.

"Why, you can stay in the house. It won't hurt either you or Tim to
take an afternoon of rest," came stoically from his mother.

"But I don't want to take an afternoon of rest," Carl protested
wrathfully. "Not on that day of all others. I'm going up to Coulters
to hang round outside and watch the fun. If I'm not invited I can at
least do that."

"Carl McGregor! You'll do nothing of the sort. Hang round outside,
indeed! Haven't you any pride at all? If you're not asked to the
party I should hope you'd have the good taste to keep out of the way of
it. Hang round outside! You ought to be ashamed even to suggest such a
thing," said Mrs. McGregor with scorn. "No, you'll do no lingering on
the outskirts of Mr. John's reception, you can make up your mind to
that. You'll stay politely at home as the rest of us plan to do and
keep under cover so folks won't be asking you why you're not up at
Coulters. I've some regard for the family dignity if you haven't. And
since you'll be at home anyway, you may as well take the chance to do a
kindly deed and let Frankie O'Dowd wear your clothes. You don't want to
grow up to be selfish."

"My pants will be miles too long for that O'Dowd kid," responded the
unwilling altruist grudgingly.

"Oh, his mother can baste them up so they'll do for one afternoon," was
the serene answer.

"Huh! I don't envy Frank going to that party with two thicknesses of
trousers on his legs," Carl declared. "If it's a hot day he'll melt."

"Beggars cannot be choosers," Mrs. McGregor asserted. "Likely Frankie
will be that tickled to go to the lawn party that he won't care what he
has on any more than you would. You'd go quicker than a wink in
basted-up trousers if you got the chance."

"You bet I would! Why, I'd go in--in--in _anything_!" was the fervent
affirmation. "Somehow, Ma, it just seems as if I couldn't give up the
idea of going. I feel as if something _must_ happen so we'd get asked."

"Why, Carl--you silly boy! You don't mean to say you are actually
cherishing the thought you may be invited yet?" his mother exclaimed
incredulously. "Put it out of your head, son, like a sensible lad.
There isn't a chance of it, dear. The invitations were sent out last
week and had you been going to get one you would have received it days
ago. There'll be no more people asked now."

"There might be--some might have been forgotten by mistake. Or the
invitation might have got stuck in the letter box and delayed."

"I'm afraid not, Carlie!" his mother said gently. "Mark my words, all
the invitations there are going to be to that garden party have gone
out. There won't be any more. The folks that haven't had theirs already
won't have none and if you're wise you will face that fact and give up
thinking about Mr. Coulter and his wedding."

The corners of Carl's mouth drooped but he stubbornly insisted:

"Well, anyhow, Ma, don't you tell Frankie O'Dowd he can have my clothes
until the very last minute, will you? Promise me that."

"Aye! I'll not mention the clothes yet awhile. I'll wait at least a day
or two. Most likely Julie or the Murphys will be up by that time and
ask for 'em."

And with this scanty comfort Carl was obliged to be content.

Even the concession that he would be allowed to wear his bathing suit
while at home was but feeble consolation. What did it matter what he
wore if he couldn't go to the Coulter fête?

CHAPTER XVII

AN ORDEAL

As the date for the Coulters' fête approached the weather was
breathlessly scanned in practically every home in Baileyville and
throbbing hearts almost ceased to beat lest the day be stormy or too
cold to wear the finery that awaited the great occasion. Could one have
taken off the roofs of the houses between his thumb and forefinger as
he would lift the cover off a sugar-bowl, what a bewildering array of
freshly starched muslins, clean shirts and collars, shining shoes, and
rose-encircled hats would have met his gaze!

Carl McGregor had spoken truly when he had affirmed to his mother that
everybody in the town was going to the wedding festival. All
Baileyville was on tiptoe with excitement. The schools were to be
closed for the afternoon, not alone to do Mr. Coulter honor, but
because it was quite evident that no children would be found in their
seats on the great day.

"We McGregors would be the only kids in the whole place, I bet, if they
did have school," declared Carl gloomily. "You see, Ma, it's just as I
told you--everybody's going to the Coulters'."

"I should think, hating school as you do, you'd be thankful to have a
holiday," commented Mary.

"Ordinarily I would," was the prompt reply. "But what good is this
holiday going to do me, I'd like to know, with Frankie O'Dowd wearing
all my clothes, and Mother forbidding me to go out of the house in my
bathing suit?"

"Well, at least you won't have to study," said his optimistic sister,
making an effort to comfort her morose companion.

"I might as well study; it would take up my mind," fretted Carl. "I've
nothing better to do."

His ill humor was so tragic that in spite of herself Mary laughed.

"Well, you needn't grin so over it, Miss Superiority, or go pretending
you don't wish you could go to the lawn party."

"Of course I'd love to go," Mary confessed honestly. "But if we can't I
don't see any use in mourning about it and talking of nothing else."

"I _have_ to talk about it. I think of it every minute."

"Put it out of your head."

"I can't."

"Nonsense! You don't try. Why don't you set about doing something and
forget it instead of sitting round mooning and working yourself all up?
You can run down and get the mail right now. There's the bell. Maybe
it's a letter from Uncle Frederick."

Welcoming the diversion her brother rose with alacrity. He was in a
mood when any excitement, no matter how trivial, was a boon. Down the
stairs he ran only to return a second later with a square white
envelope in his hand.

"Is it from Uncle Frederick?" queried Mary eagerly.

"Nope!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, we haven't heard from him for ever so long. I do hope
nothing's the matter. Who is the letter from?"

"I don't know."

Something in the reticence of the reply caused the girl to glance up.

"I'll take it in to Mother," volunteered she, holding out her hand.

"It isn't for Mother," Carl answered slowly.

"Not for Mother? How funny! None of the rest of us ever have letters.
Who is it for?"

"It happens to be mine."

"Carl!" Dismay and apprehension vibrated in the word.

"Yes, it's mine," her brother repeated. His obvious attempt to carry
off the episode in jaunty fashion failed, however, and it was evident
by his tense tones that he echoed Mary's alarm.

"But who on earth can be writing to you?" demanded his sister.

"I--I--don't know." The boy fingered the envelope with uneasiness. Mary
came nearer.

"Carl, what have you been up to now?" asked she. "That looks like the
teacher's writing. Aren't you going to be promoted or what is the
matter?"

"How do I know until I read the thing?" snapped Carl.

"You're not in any scrape?"

"Not that I know of."

"Honestly?"

"I tell you I can't think of any. On my honor I can't."

"Oh, well then, it's probably about your work. Most likely you're
behind the class in something and Miss Dewey wants to see you. Why
don't you buck up and find out what she has to say?"

"I'm going to in a minute."

"You're afraid to open that letter. You've done something at school you
don't want Mother and me to know about."

"I tell you I haven't."

"Then why, for pity's sake, don't you read what Miss Dewey has written
instead of looking at the note as if it was a bomb? Maybe she's
inviting you to supper. She does ask the boys sometimes."

This possibility was so encouraging that the startled expression in the
lad's eyes gave place to a serener light. Perhaps after all the
missive did not portend the calamity that a note from school usually
did. Maybe his algebra was all right and he had not flunked his Latin.
The fates may have graciously intervened.

Courageously he tore open the envelope; then a sharp cry came from his
lips.

"Hurrah!" he cried. "Mother! Mother! Where are you?"

"Here, dear, in my room. Is anything the matter?"

Carl rushed off unceremoniously, leaving the mystified Mary alone in
the middle of the kitchen.

"Oh, Ma," he panted, "what do you suppose? We're going, after
all--every one of us! Think of it! We're going!"

"Going where? Have you taken leave of your senses, sonny? What are you
talking about, pray?"

"We're going to the Coulters', Ma," asserted Carl, waving the white
envelope above his head in a frenzy of delight. "Look! Here's the bid.
And across the bottom of the paper Mr. Coulter himself has written to
say that he's sorry the invitation has been so delayed and he hopes my
mother and all of us--even the baby--will come. Gee!"

Quite exhausted, Carl dropped into a chair.

"But why should Mr. Coulter send this invitation to you?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Maybe Hal Harling or somebody told him how
disappointed I was at not being asked," returned Carl serenely.

"Mercy! I hope not," ejaculated his horrified mother.

"Why not?"

"Why, it would be almost like asking Mr. Coulter for an invitation."

"He wouldn't care, I guess," came comfortably from Carl. "There's
plenty of room and there'll be food enough so a few people more or less
wouldn't bother him."

"But I wouldn't think of going to a party, or letting you, if you had
demanded in so many words to be invited," returned Mrs. McGregor with a
toss of her head.

"You don't mean to say, Ma, that you're thinking of not going," her son
gasped.

"I certainly shall not stir a step to Mr. Coulter's until I find out
how we happened to receive this remarkable invitation."

"Ma!"

"I sha'n't," repeated his mother. "Why, the bare idea of your trying to
get a card to that wedding reception!"

"I didn't try to, Mother; honest, I didn't," protested Carl. "I didn't
ask anybody to do a thing for me. I was only fooling when I said that.
Of course Hal Harling knows well enough that I've been crazy to go. He
and Louise couldn't help seeing how sore I was about it. But I never
said anything else."

"I'm thankful to hear that. One never knows what you will do."

Mrs. McGregor gave a sigh of relief and taking the card examined it.

"Perhaps," she presently observed in a gentler tone, "this invitation
has nothing to do with you. It may be possible that young Mr. Coulter
remembered how long your father worked in the mills and thought it
would be nice to ask us because of that. If so, it was very thoughtful
of him. And most likely the card was sent to you because he happened to
have heard your name. Goodness knows, with the messes you're in, I
should think all the town might be aware of it."

"And you'll go, Ma?" In his eagerness Carl brushed aside the
unflattering picture his mother's words presented.

"If I find it's a bona fide invitation and not some of your concocting
I'll go--not otherwise. It would be ungrateful to snub Mr. John if he
is trying to be kind. But the thing that makes me doubtful is that the
envelope should be addressed to you. Why wasn't the invitation sent to
me? I am the head of the family--or at least I attempt to be," amended
she with an upward curve of her lips.

"Oh, who cares, Ma, who the invitation was addressed to?" cut in Carl
impatiently. "The main thing is that it's come and we are going to the
party. I'd go had it been sent to James Frederick. What does it matter?
Say, Ma, isn't it lucky you hadn't loaned our clothes? We'll need 'em
ourselves now."

"When is the wedding?" Mary asked.

"Do you mean to say you don't even know?" inquired her brother with
scorn.

"I've forgotten."

"You have! Then you are the only person in Baileyville who has," was
the sarcastic rejoinder. "Well, if you must know, it's the day after
to-day."

"It will be a scramble to get ready, won't it, Mother?" commented the
practical Mary.

"There certainly will be a lot to do," Mrs. McGregor agreed. "However,
I guess we can manage if everybody will turn to."

"I'll help," announced Carl in a burst of magnanimousness. "I'll wash
and iron all my own clothes."

"I'd like a peep at the shirt you washed and ironed," taunted Mary in
derision.

"I fancy a peep would be enough," put in her mother, laughing. "No,
son, your talent does not lie in washing or ironing. But you can take
care of the youngsters while Mary and I do it. And, Mary, we'll have to
get a bunch of fresh flowers for your best hat; those pink daisies are
too faded to wear. We'll get a new hair ribbon, too. And I must have
some other lace in the neck of my silk waist and----"

"Oh, if you're going to talk ribbon, artificial flowers, and all that
rot I'm going over to Harlings," announced Carl, rising.

"Indeed you're not," objected his mother. "You're going to get out the
blacking bottle and start cleaning and polishing the shoes. There'll be
seven pairs to get ready and I want a fine shine on every one of them."

"But what's the use of doing it now? They'll get all dusty again before
the day after to-morrow," Carl grumbled.

"Not if they're put away," came in even accents from his mother. "We'll
just have to wear slippers, sneakers and things until Tuesday. I guess
we can get along. We can't go leaving everything until the last minute
or we shall be all up in a heap. We must begin directly to get things
done. I shall braid your hair, Mary, and Nell's right away, so it will
be well crimped. And Timmie, you and Carl and Martin have all got to
have baths. Yes, you have, whether you like it or not. If you don't you
can't go. That's all there is about that, so stop fussing. Carl, you
put some kettles of water on the stove to heat. You boys must be
scrubbed whether the rest of us are or not. You need it most. And Mary,
run like a good girl and see if you can hunt up a clean pair of
stockings for everybody--stockings without too many holes. Mercy on us!
I wish Mr. Coulter had given us a little more notice--indeed I do!"

"I don't see who's going to know, in that push, whether I've had a bath
or not," persisted the argumentative Tim.

"You don't? Have you happened to get a glimpse of that ebony ring round
your neck?" interrogated his mother significantly. "Anybody who saw
that would have some notion."

"I hate a bath!"

"You look it."

"Oh, shut up, Timmie," cautioned Carl in an undertone. "Don't go rowing
at Ma now. If you do she may get her back up and not take you to the
party at all. I hate to be scrubbed within an inch of my life as much
as you do, but I'm not saying so to-day. I'd be boiled in oil sooner
than not go to this party. Besides, your neck is black. I'll bet it
will take sapolio to get it clean. But don't go yammering about it.
Just hop and do as Ma tells you. It's the only way."

Heeding the wisdom of his elder brother Tim ceased further protests and
_hopped_.

Indeed the hopping became very spirited and general during the short
interval that preceded the wedding day. And when at last that glorious
morning dawned cloudless and fair, what a scarlet, shining, spotless
cavalcade of McGregors its radiant light shone upon!

First there was Mrs. McGregor, hot but triumphant in a petticoat that
crackled like brittle ice beneath her black alpaca skirt and a pair of
white cotton gloves at the fingers of which she was continually
tugging. Both her hat and Mary's gleamed ebon under a recent coat of
blacking--so recent that they entertained some concern lest it trickle
down their heated faces in disfiguring rivulets. Mary's white dress
rustled as crisply as did her mother's petticoat and her hair, crimped
and ironed until it was fuzzy as a bushman's, drifted out behind her, a
hempen whirlwind. New flowers on her hat and accompanying pink
streamers afforded her tranquil satisfaction as did also the string of
coral beads Uncle Frederick had once sent from Naples, a gift worn only
on very special occasions.

As for the boys, every hair of their heads had been plastered securely
into place, and blistered with scrubbing, they stood wretched but
hopeful in a row waiting with patience the moment when clean shirts,
creased trousers, and sparkling boots might be forgotten in the
delights the Coulter party promised.

Even Nell and the baby looked unnatural and reflected the general
discomfort and self-consciousness.

The getting-ready had been a fatiguing ordeal and everybody's nerves
were at the breaking point. Systematically Mrs. McGregor had proceeded
with the process, beginning with the eldest of the family, and as each
work of art was completed it was set aside much as a frosted cake is
set away to cool, and the next victim was summoned.

In the meantime those who had been _finished_, motionless in chairs,
were allowed the entertainment of watching each succeeding martyr put
through his round of torture. Yet diverting as this had been, the
waiting had been tedious, particularly for those who stood at the head
of the line.

Now, the rite over, everybody drew a long breath and struggled to
forget past miseries. Therefore when Hal and Louise Harling, who were
to augment the procession, arrived, every cloud was put to flight and
the delegation set forth in the highest of spirits.

"What a pity it is Uncle Frederick Dillingham isn't here!" commented
Mrs. McGregor, as they went along. "And what a shame, too, that
Grandfather Harling and your mother, Louise, cannot see this day! It
would furnish them with something to talk of for weeks."

"Hal and I will tell them all about it," returned the girl brightly.
"Isn't it splendid you all could go? Poor Carl was so disappointed when
he thought he was to be out of it."

"I know he was," nodded the lad's mother. "In fact, it worried me not a
little lest it was because he made his disappointment so evident that
we got invited. I was afraid some well-meaning person might have taken
pity on him and begged him a card. Had not you and Hal declared you had
nothing to do with our being asked, I should not have stirred a peg to
the party, let Carl plead as he might. But now I feel more comfortable
about our going, although I must confess it puzzles me why the
invitation was sent to him instead of to me. It certainly seems a
little funny. However, it may have been an accident. Of course Mr.
Coulter has had a lot to think of and might well be forgiven one
mistake. It isn't likely he could remember my husband's name. He was
pretty good to think of us at all."

"They say at the mills that Mr. John is very friendly and has ever so
many plans afoot for the workers. There is even talk of a recreation
building being put up on the factory grounds."

"Not much like his father, who wouldn't spend a cent he didn't have
to," mused Mrs. McGregor.

"No. Mr. John is different; everybody says so. Besides, he is younger
and belongs to a generation with other ideas."

"Better ideas, I hope. If children didn't improve on their fathers
where would the world be?" Then suddenly cutting short her
philosophical meditations Mrs. McGregor called imperatively:

"Timmie, stop chasing those butterflies this minute. Do you want to
spoil the shine on your shoes before you even get to the party? You'll
have your collar ruined if you gallop round and get so hot. Come back
here and walk beside me. I'm resolved to land you all at Mr. Coulter's
looking like human beings, whatever happens afterward. Then if you
prefer to smooch your face with dirt and rumple up your hair, I can't
help it. But you shall stay clean until you're inside the gate."

Glaring for a moment on her subjects with subduing ferocity Mrs.
McGregor drew herself up and moved majestically in at the entrance of
the Coulter mansion.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SOLUTION OF MANY MYSTERIES

Once inside the magic portal of the great estate, however, Mrs.
McGregor's task became increasingly difficult. What a bewildering scene
it was! The green lawns, terraced down to the lake, were dotted with
tents and from each one floated out tantalizing hints of the delights
within. The strains of a band and the laughter of dancers drifted
forth from one; waiters with heavily laden trays passed in and out of
another; around still a third swarmed children and one glimpsed through
the open doorway a marionette show. Under a gay red umbrella at the
edge of the garden women, fluttering like multi-hued butterflies,
ladled lemonade from giant punch-bowls.

Oh, a wonderland of myriad delights beckoned in every direction and it
was only by dint of extreme severity that Mrs. McGregor succeeded in
keeping her little army in formation and preventing its neatly ranged
ranks from becoming lost in the surrounding hubbub.

"You're not to stir a step from this spot until I tell you you may,"
commanded she. "The very notion of your all racing off to enjoy
yourselves before you have so much as said a word of thanks to Mr.
Coulter who asked you here! Where are your manners? Are you forgetting
so quick that it is his wedding day? Aren't you going to wish him joy
as is proper to do when he has taken all this trouble to give you a
good time?"

Her tone was withering in its rebuke and as if hypnotized by its
cadence the wriggling children thronging in her wake stood motionless.

"In my day folks were grateful for what was done for them and expected
to say _thank you_ to their elders. Now there seems to be no such thing
as politeness among youngsters. But to-day, whether you will or no,
before you do anything else we are going to hunt up Mr. John and his
bride and every one of you is to thank him for asking you to his party.
And Tim, you and Mary and Carl are to repeat the speech I taught you. I
pray you've not forgotten it already. You hope he and his wife will
have many days as happy as this one. Remember and don't get mixed up
and say the wrong thing."

With this final caution Mrs. McGregor wheeled about and marshalled the
miniature procession following her into a vast, rose-garlanded tent at
the right of the entrance. Two aisles roped off with laurel divided it,
and throngs of people were moving down one of these and returning by
the other. In the far distance one could see a canopy of green, a
figure misty in white tulle, and a bevy of bridesmaids in pink, blue,
yellow, and lavender.

"This seems to be the right place," whispered Mrs. McGregor. "We'll
fall right in behind this man and woman. Now mind your manners, all of
you. Poor though we are, we can be polite without it costing us a cent.
Timmie, you keep close at my heels with Mary. I've got all I can do to
handle the baby and Nell. Carl, see that you don't squeeze Martin's
hand too tight and get him peevish. Take hold of him gently. And don't
one of you dare to push. We must expect to move along slowly and wait
our turn. Yes, I know it's hot. But there'll be lemonade and ice cream
by and by. I guess you can stand the heat for a little while. What is
it, Tim? Your boots hurt? Nonsense! They're the same boots you always
wear, aren't they? Were you racing round playing ball in them it's
little notice you'd be taking of them, I reckon. Don't be silly and get
sulky now or next time I shall leave you at home."

To an accompaniment of these and similar admonitions the McGregor host
proceeded on its way along with the other guests.

Then at last when the receiving party was well in sight and Mrs.
McGregor and her family were making a decorous approach the anxious
mother was horrified to see Carl, forgetful of all else, rush from the
line and racing up to Mr. John Coulter, seize both his hands.

"Oh!" cried the boy, in a voice so shrill with ecstasy that its accents
penetrated to every corner of the great tent, "Oh, Mr. Coulter, I never
dreamed it was you! Why didn't you tell me who you were? I'm so glad to
see you again! I thought I never would. I've hunted and hunted for you
and your red car ever since."

[Illustration: "I've hunted for you and your red car ever since."
_Page_ 253.]

Plainly Mr. John Coulter, instead of being offended by this unexpected
onslaught, was delighted for he beamed down on the excited lad, shook
both his hands heartily, and laughed so the ring of it echoed all
about.

"So you didn't guess the riddle, little chap," Mrs. McGregor heard him
say. "Well, I didn't mean you should."

"And to think it was you!" Carl was still murmuring, as if in a trance.
"Just to think it was you! Of course you were the one who got Louise
her new place."

"Guilty."

"Gee, but it was white of you! She's right here behind my mother." Then
inspired by sudden understanding he added, "And the Christmas dinners
came from you, too."

"Come, come, youngster, this is no moment to be confronting me with all
my crimes," the blushing bridegroom protested. "Here's Mrs. Coulter
just married to me--what is she going to think if you tell her how many
conspiracies I have been mixed up in? This, Marion, is one of my very
good friends, Carl McGregor. His father was for many years in our mills
and if I mistake not here is his whole family coming up to speak to
us."

"Indeed we are, sir," declared Mrs. McGregor, making a quaint English
curtsy, "and it's scandalized enough I am to see my boy here racing at
you as if he was a wild beast and forgetting all the etiquette I've
taught him. He had a nice speech ready to say but where it is now
heaven only knows!"

"I'd far rather he said to me what he did," asserted Mr. Coulter. "You
see, Carl and I are old friends."

"I don't see," replied the mystified mother, "but no doubt you are,
since you tell me so. I myself had no idea the lad know you from Adam."

"And I hadn't either, Mother. Gee, but it is rich! To think I went
riding with you that day, Mr. Coulter, and speeled off all that guff,
and you never so much as raised an eyelash!"

"Carl!" ejaculated his despairing parent.

"Well, I hope this is not to be the end of our acquaintance,
youngster," Mr. Coulter returned, passing over Mrs. McGregor's rebuke.
"Come and see Mrs. Coulter and me some day. And remember that if you
ever wish to enter the mills I will make a place for you."

"That's bully of you, sir!"

"Carl!" Mrs. McGregor was dumb with consternation. "The very idea of
your speaking to Mr. Coulter like that!" declared she, when at last she
could catch her breath. "Come away before you say anything more to
disgrace the family. There's others waiting to give him their good
wishes and you seem to have forgotten all about yours, although
goodness knows you were drilled and drilled on the speech you were to
make. Yes, Mrs. Coulter, these are my children--all six of them. The
baby's name? James Frederick, after his uncle. And this is Mary, and
Timmie, and Martin, and Nell. The oldest ones had nice things ready to
say to you but Carl has knocked 'em clean out of their heads. I hope
you'll not lay it up against us. No, marm, this tall boy and girl don't
belong to me, but I'm that fond of 'em I wish they did. They are our
neighbors, Hal and Louise Harling."

Instantly Mr. Coulter reached forward and greeted the young people.

"The new job is going well?" he asked, addressing Louise.

"Oh, I'm so happy in it, Mr. Coulter."

"That's good! And you, Harling?"

"I'm getting on splendidly, sir."

"Excellent! There'll be a raise coming to you next month--quite a
substantial one. We've been looking you up."

"Oh, sir, how can I----"

"There, there! We mustn't stop to talk about it now. If you must thank
somebody for it thank this young scoundrel here. It was he put me up to
it."

There was time for nothing further. Swept onward by crowds that surged
behind, the McGregors, like chips on the crest of a mammoth wave, were
borne forward and out of the tent.

In the open air Mrs. McGregor wiped her perspiring brow.

"Now," began she, turning accusingly on her son, "perhaps you will be
so good as to tell us what all this is about. How came you to know Mr.
John Coulter well enough to be treating him like a long-lost brother?
And what had you to do with Hal and Louise and the Coulter mills? I
feel as if I were going crazy! One minute you don't even know Mr.
Coulter by sight and the next he is sending us a Christmas dinner and
you are fairly falling on his neck."

Carl shook with laughter.

"Oh, Mother, it's all so rich--so perfectly corking!" he cried. "You
couldn't half appreciate it if I told you."

"I could try," came curtly from Mrs. McGregor.

But her son did not heed her.

"To think of that being Mr. John Coulter," chuckled he. "And, oh, the
things I said to him! I tremble to recall them. I told him Corcoran was
a low-down skunk, I know that. And I gushed on a lot about Hal and
Louise. I only wish I could remember what I did say. Jove! He must have
split his sides laughing."

"When? When did you do all this?" interrogated the lad's mother
impatiently.

"Oh, when was it?" ruminated Carl, struggling to collect his scattered
wits. "It seems ages and ages ago that all that happened. It was before
Christmas, I'm certain of that."

"And you went riding with Mr. Coulter? I heard you saying something
about it."

"Yes."

"You actually went to ride with him?"

"I sure did!"

"Well, all I can say is I should like to know when all these miracles
took place," repeated Carl's mother. "Where was I, and why wasn't I
told? You might at least have mentioned it at home."

"I know it, Ma," apologized Carl with disarming frankness. "I did try
twice to tell you but the chance never seemed to come right; and by and
by it got to be so long ago that I forgot all about it."

"Forgot you went motoring with Mr. John Coulter?" Mrs. McGregor spoke
with incredulity.

"You see I didn't know at the time that it was Mr. John Coulter, Ma."

"I don't see! I don't understand anything about it," repeated the woman
helplessly.

"Well, you will by and by. It is a long story--too long to tell now.
When we get home you shall hear it from beginning to end. But now----
Gee whizz! There goes Martin making for the pond! I'll head him off."

Away went Carl across the velvet lawn and with an unsatisfied air Mrs.
McGregor wheeled about to collect Nell and Tim, who were already
tugging at her skirts. She felt as if the events of the past half-hour
were a dream. Carl, her harum-scarum son, the catastrophe worker of the
family, was the acknowledged friend of Mr. John Coulter, one of the
richest and most revered citizens of Baileyville. And more than that he
appeared to possess the influence to have men removed from their jobs
and discharged employees reinstated in lost positions. He even had
power to have people's salaries raised. Would wonders never cease?

CHAPTER XIX

UNRAVELING THE SNARLS

How late the McGregors sat up talking that night it would have been
alarming to confess. It was so late that the streets became silent and
deserted and conversation had to be conducted in whispers lest it
arouse the O'Dowds, Sullivans, and Murphys.

And what tense, eager whispers they were!

Mrs. McGregor, her bonnet still in her lap, sat on the edge of a chair
too engrossed to so much as think of the shrimp pink tulle dress she
had planned to finish before she went to bed that night; nor did she,
in her usual methodical manner, take time to slip out of her best skirt
or put away her company shoes and gloves. She was far too excited for
that.

Happy, tumbled, and nodding the babies had been put to sleep and
afterward their elders, joined by Hal and Louise Harling, huddled in
the kitchen, closed the doors, and talked and talked. Every detail of
Carl's amazing story had to be told over and over again that his
listeners might enjoy to the full the marvel and humor of each
successive event. Everything was clear as crystal now--Corcoran's
transfer, Louise's reinstatement, Hal's increasing salary, the
Christmas dinners. Even the conundrum of the watch remained an enigma
no longer.

"It was, of course, Mr. Coulter who told Corcoran about your rescuing
his baby," Carl explained to his chum. "I remember that I happened to
mention the accident to him."

Hal nodded.

"But the thing I don't understand," he said with a puzzled air, "is how
you could go to that office looking for a job and never so much as
suspect who Mr. Coulter was. There must have been signs up with the
firm's name on them."

"I suppose there were," Carl answered. "I don't know about that. You
see, I was too rattled and wrought up to notice much of anything.
Besides, I was some scared. It was such a swell joint and that bell-boy
(or whatever you call him) was so lofty and elegant that it froze the
blood in my veins. More than that I was crazy to get a position and was
so darned afraid they wouldn't take me that I wasn't thinking of
anything else."

"You're a bully little pal, Carl," Hal remarked, placing an
affectionate hand on the younger boy's shoulder.

"Pooh! I did no more than you'd have done for me if I'd been in a
hole," replied Carl modestly. "You'd move heaven and earth to help us
if we needed you."

"You've said it, youngster!"

"Then what is there so remarkable in my trying to do the same for you
and Louise?"

"It was splendid of you, Carlie," whispered Louise.

"Oh, I didn't do much," was the gruff retort. "As it happened, I didn't
really do anything. But I wanted to--you can bank on that."

"Evidently you convinced Mr. Coulter of the sincerity of your good
intentions," grinned Hal.

"Mr. Coulter! Gee! Every time I think of him I have to laugh. Picture
my having the nerve to go reforming his mill for him and complaining of
his employees! And fancy me parading into his private office asking him
for work! Had I known what I was doing I should have been petrified
with fear." Smothered laughter convulsed the boys frame. "Well, as Ma
says, ignorance is bliss and fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

"I guess Mr. Coulter sized up the situation all right," mused Hal.

"Oh, he knew; he understood the whole thing. He told me so to-day,"
Carl responded quickly. "He's live wire enough not to let a joke slip
past him. He had his fun out of the affair and don't you think he
didn't. What's more, he didn't mean ever to let me find out what a boob
I'd been. He was just going to keep the secret to himself. Then this
wedding party came along and he happened to think we might like to
come. So he took a chance and sent the bid."

"And that explains why the invitation came to you," reflected Mrs.
McGregor.

"That's it, Ma. You have your little son Carlie to thank for your card
to the spree," the lad responded impishly. "I'll be getting you into
high society some day if you're good."

"If you don't get us all into jail or some other place before then
we'll be lucky," came brusquely from his mother.

"Now isn't that gratitude for you?" growled Carl with mock indignation.
"Here I take my mother and all her family to a perfectly good party and
this is all the thanks I get for it."

"Yes, this happened to be a perfectly good party," agreed Mrs. McGregor
mischievously. "But it might have ended in some scrape or other and
like as not it would another time. One never can be sure where your
adventures will bring up."

"Well, Ma, Mr. Coulter appreciates me if you don't."

"Apparently he does--up to date. Just you take care that you go on
deserving his good opinion."

"I mean to," Carl flashed. "Say, folks, sha'n't we have something to
write Uncle Frederick now? I'll bet it will take ten sheets of paper to
retail the whole thing; and then he won't really have any idea of what
happened. None of you ever can. You just ought to have been there and
seen the play."

"It's as good as a play--as good as any moving picture, in my opinion,"
Louise ventured.

"What wouldn't I have given to be under the seat of that car and
listened when you were laying out poor old Cork!" Hal ejaculated.

"I laid him fine and flat," acknowledged Carl with candor.

"Events have proved you did. Poor Cork! Still, Corks float, you know,
and he has. He isn't dead yet by any means," jested Hal. "In fact, he
told me only a day or two ago that he liked his new job much better
than he did the old one so I guess nobody need waste pity on him."

"I'm afraid he wasn't punished much, after all," sniffed Mrs. McGregor.

"Oh, he's had it borne in upon him that he was a brute, Ma; don't you
fret," declared Carl. "Mr. Coulter never does things by halves. When he
starts in he finishes up a job in bang-up style. Corcoran's learned his
lesson; and if he has that is all that is necessary."

A clock struck softly.

"Hal Harling! Do you realize it is twelve o'clock?" Louise exclaimed in
dismay. "We must go home this minute. The very idea of our staying here
and keeping the McGregors up until this hour! I'd no idea it was so
late. Why, you may be robbed of your precious Corcoran watch if you
don't hurry home out of the lonely streets. Good-night, everybody! And
blessings on you, Carlie! You've been a trump. I'm going to begin
to-morrow and work harder than ever for Mr. John Coulter."

"Here's to him!" Carl began. But a restraining hand was clapped over
his mouth.

"Carl! Carl! For mercy's sake, remember that it's twelve o'clock and
everybody's abed and asleep. Don't go cheering for Mr. Coulter now. You
can go out in the field and do it to-morrow."

"I'm afraid I'll be too busy to-morrow."

"And what'll you be doing to-morrow, pray, that's of so much
importance?"

"Why, I'll have to be deciding whether I want to go to college, or go
to sea with Uncle Frederick; or go into Mr. Coulter's mills," was the
teasing answer. "I seem to have three careers open to me. Maybe I'll
have to toss up a penny to find out which I'd better take. Will you
lend me the penny, Ma?"

"Indeed I won't," snapped his mother wrathfully. "Three careers! Humph!
Still I'm not saying that if you could go into the mills with Mr.
Coulter to stand behind you you might not make your fortune. But
there's time enough to decide that later. We needn't argue it at
twelve o'clock at night."