The Turn of the Tide Part 25

"But that absurd house of yours isn't ready yet," protested Mrs.

Merideth.

"I know, but I shall stay with Patty until it is," returned Margaret. "I would rather wait until you go, as you seem so worried about the 'break,' as you insist upon calling it; but if you won't, why I must, that is all. I must be there to superintend matters."

"Then I suppose I shall have to go," moaned Mrs. Merideth, "for I simply will not have you leave us here and go down there to live; and I shall tell everybody, _everybody_," she added firmly, "that it is merely for this winter, and that we allowed you to do it only on that one condition."

Margaret smiled, but she made no comment--it was enough to fight present battles without trying to win future ones.

On the day the rest of the family left Hilcrest, Margaret moved to Patty's little house on the Hill road. Her tiny room up under the eaves looked woefully small and inconvenient to eyes that were accustomed to luxurious Hilcrest; and the supper--which to Patty was sumptuous in the extravagance she had allowed herself in her visitor's honor--did not tempt her appet.i.te in the least. She told herself, however, that all this was well and good; and she ate the supper and laid herself down upon the hard bed with an exaltation that rendered her oblivious to taste and feeling.

In due time the Mill House, as Margaret called her new home, was ready for occupancy, and the family moved in. Naming the place had given Margaret no little food for thought.

"I want something simple and plain," she had said to Patty; "something that the people will like, and feel an interest in. But I don't want any 'Refuges' or 'Havens' or 'Rests' or 'Homes' about it. It is a home, but not the kind that begins with a capital letter. It is just one of the mill houses."

"Well, why don't ye call it the 'Mill House,' then, an' done with it?"

demanded Patty.

"Patty, you're a genius! I will," cried Margaret. And the "Mill House"

it was from that day.

Margaret's task was not an easy one. Both she and her house were looked upon with suspicion, and she had some trouble in finding the two or three teachers of just the right sort to help her. Even when she had found these teachers and opened her cla.s.ses in sewing, cooking, and the care of children, only a few enrolled themselves as pupils.

"Never mind," said Margaret, "we shall grow. You'll see!"

The mill people, however, were not the only ones that learned something during the next few months. Margaret herself learned much. She learned that while there were men who purposely idled their time away and drank up their children's hard-earned wages, there were others who tramped the streets in vain in search of work.

"I hain't got nothin' ter do yit, Miss," one such said to Margaret, in answer to her sympathetic inquiries. "But thar ain't a boss but what said if I'd got kids I might send them along. They was short o' kids. I been tryin' ter keep Rosy an' Katy ter school. I was cal'latin' ter make somethin' of 'em more'n their dad an' their mammy is: but I reckon as how I'll have ter set 'em ter work."

"Oh, but you mustn't," remonstrated Margaret. "That would spoil everything. Don't you see that you mustn't? They must go to school--get an education."

The man gazed at her with dull eyes.

"They got ter eat--first," he said.

"Yes, yes, I know," interposed Margaret, eagerly. "I understand all that, and I'll help about that part. I'll give you money until you get something to do."

A sudden flash came into the man's eyes. His shoulders straightened.

"Thank ye, Miss. We be n't charity folks." And he turned away.

A week later Margaret learned that Rosy and Katy were out of school.

When she looked them up she found them at work in the mills.

This matter of the school question was a great puzzle to Margaret. Very early in her efforts she had sought out the public school-teachers, and asked their help and advice. She was appalled at the number of children who appeared scarcely to understand that there was such a thing as school. This state of affairs she could not seem to remedy, however, in spite of her earnest efforts. The parents, in many cases, were indifferent, and the children more so. Some of the children in the mills, indeed, were there solely--according to the parents'

version--because they could not "get on" in school. Conscious that there must be a school law, Margaret went vigorously to work to find and enforce it. Then, and not until then, did she realize the seriousness of even this one phase of the problem she had undertaken to solve.

There were other phases, too. It was not always poverty, Margaret found, that was responsible for setting the children to work. Sometimes it was ambition. There were men who could not even speak the language of their adopted country intelligibly, yet who had ever before them the one end and aim--money. To this end and aim were sacrificed all the life and strength of whatever was theirs. The minute such a man's boys and girls were big enough and tall enough to be "sworn in" he got the papers and set them to work; and never after that, as long as they could move one dragging little foot after the other, did they cease to pour into the hungry treasury of his hand the pitiful dimes and pennies that represented all they knew of childhood.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

The winter pa.s.sed and the spring came. The Mill House, even to the most skeptical observer, showed signs of being a success. Even already a visible influence had radiated from its shining windows and orderly yard; and the neighboring houses, with their obvious attempt at "slickin' up," reminded one of a small boy who has been told to wash his face, for company was coming. The cla.s.ses boasted a larger attendance, and the stomachs and the babies of many a family in the town were feeling the beneficial results of the lessons.

To Margaret, however, the whole thing seemed hopelessly small: there was so much to do, so little done! She was still the little girl with the teaspoon and the bowl of sand; and the chasm yawned as wide as ever. To tell the truth, Margaret was tired, discouraged, and homesick. For months her strength, time, nerves, and sympathies had been taxed to the utmost; and now that there had come a breathing s.p.a.ce, when the intricate machinery of her scheme could run for a moment without her hand at the throttle, she was left weak and nerveless. She was, in fact, perilously near a breakdown.

Added to all this, she was lonely. More than she would own to herself she missed her friends, her home life at Hilcrest, and the tender care and sympathetic interest that had been lavished upon her for so many years. Here she was the head, the strong tower of defense, the one to whom everybody came with troubles, perplexities, and griefs. There was no human being to whom she could turn for comfort. They all looked to her. Even Bobby McGinnis, when she saw him at all--which was seldom--treated her with a frigid deference that was inexpressibly annoying to her.

From the Spencers she heard irregularly. Earlier in the winter the letters had been more frequent: nervously anxious epistles of some length from Mrs. Merideth; stilted notes, half protesting, half pleading, from Ned; and short, but wonderfully sympathetic communications from Frank. Later Frank had fallen very ill with a fever of some sort, and Mrs. Merideth and Ned had written only hurried little bulletins from the sick-room. Then had come the good news that Frank was out of danger, though still far too weak to undertake the long journey home. Their letters showed unmistakably their impatience at the delay, and questioned her as to her health and welfare, but could set no date for their return. Frank, in particular, was disturbed, they said. He had not planned to leave either herself or the mills so long, it being his intention when he went away merely to take a short trip with his sister and brother, and then hurry back to America alone. As for Frank himself--he had not written her since his illness.

Margaret was thinking of all this, and was feeling specially forlorn as she sat alone in the little sitting-room at the Mill House one evening in early April. She held a book before her, but she was not reading; and she looked up at once when Patty entered the room.

"I'm sorry ter trouble ye," began Patty, hesitatingly, "but Bobby McGinnis is here an' wanted me ter ask ye----"

Margaret raised an imperious hand.

"That's all right, Patty," she said so sharply that Patty opened wide her eyes; "but suppose you just ask Bobby McGinnis to come here to me and ask his question direct. I will see him now." And Patty, wondering vaguely what had come to her gentle-eyed, gentle-voiced mistress--as she insisted upon calling Margaret--fled precipitately.

Two minutes later Bobby McGinnis himself stood tall and straight just inside the door.

"You sent for me?" he asked.

Margaret sprang to her feet. All the pent loneliness of the past weeks and months burst forth in a stinging whip of retort.

"Yes, I sent for you." She paused, but the man did not speak, and in a moment she went on hurriedly, feverishly. "I always send for you--if I see you at all, and yet you know how hard I'm trying to help these people, and that you are the only one here that can help me."

She paused again, and again the man was silent.

"Don't you know what I'm trying to do?" she asked.

"Yes." The lips closed firmly over the single word.

"Didn't I ask you to help me? Didn't I appoint us a committee of two to do the work?" Her voice shook, and her chin trembled like that of a grieved child.

"Yes." Again that strained, almost harsh monosyllable.

Margaret made an impatient gesture.

"Bobby McGinnis, why don't you help me?" she demanded, tearfully. "Why do you stand aloof and send to me? Why don't you come to me frankly and freely, and tell me the best way to deal with these people?"

There was no answer. The man had half turned his face so that only his profile showed clean-cut and square-chinned against the close-shut door.

"Don't you know that I am alone here--that I have no friends but you and Patty?" she went on tremulously. "Do you think it kind of you to let me struggle along alone like this? Sometimes it seems almost as if you were afraid----"

"I am afraid," cut in a voice shaken with emotion.