Part 4 (1/2)

”Huh--I guess I'd know better'n that,” retorted the boy. ”Come on, Mag, we gotter go.”

”You will come to see me again, won't you?” asked the Interpreter, as the children stood on the threshold. ”You have legs, you know, that can easily bring you.”

”Yer bet we'll come,” said Bobby, ”won't we, Mag?”

The little girl, looking back at the man in the wheel chair, smiled.

For some time after the children had gone the Interpreter sat very still. His dark eyes were fixed upon the Mill with its tall, grim stacks and the columns of smoke that twisted upward to form that overshadowing cloud. The voices of the children, as they started down the stairway to the dusty road and to their wretched home in the Flats, came to him m.u.f.fled and indistinct from under the cliff.

Perhaps the man in the wheel chair was thinking of the days when Maggie's princess lady was a little girl and lived in the old house next door to Mary and Charlie Martin. Perhaps his mind still dwelt on the fairy story and the princess who found her jewel of happiness. It may have been that he was listening to the droning, moaning voice of the Mill, as one listens to the distant roar of the surf on a dangerous coast.

With a weary movement he took the unfinished basket from the table and began to work. But it was not his basket making that caused the weariness of the Interpreter--it was not his work that put the light of sorrow in his dark eyes.

As Bobby and Maggie went leisurely down the zigzag steps, proud of the tremendous success of their adventure, the boy paused several times to execute an inspirational ”stunt” that would in some degree express his triumphant emotions.

”Gee!” he exulted. ”Wait 'til I see Skinny and Chuck an' the rest of the gang! Gee, won't I tell 'em! Just yer wait. I'll knock 'em dead.

Gee!”

On the bottom step they deliberately seated themselves as if they had suddenly found the duty of leaving the charmed vicinity of that hut on the cliff above impossible.

Suddenly, from around the curve in the road followed by a whirling cloud of dust, came an automobile. It was a big car, very imposing with its s.h.i.+ny black body, its gleaming metal, and its liveried chauffeur.

The children gazed in open-mouthed wonder. The car drew nearer, and they saw, behind the dignified personality at the wheel, a lady who might well have been the beautiful princess of the Interpreter's fairy tale.

Little Maggie caught her brother's arm. ”Bobby! It's--it's _her_--it's the princess lady herself.”

”Gee!” gasped the boy. ”She's a slowin' down--what d'yer--”

The automobile stopped not thirty feet from where the children sat on the lower step of the old stairway. Springing to the ground, the chauffeur, with the dignity of a prime minister, opened the door.

But the princess lady sat motionless in her car. With an expression of questioning disapproval she looked at the Interpreter's friends on that lower step of the Interpreter's stairway.

CHAPTER II

LITTLE MAGGIE'S PRINCESS LADY

By nine out of ten of the Millsburgh people, the Interpreter would be described as a strange character. But the judge once said to the cigar-store philosopher, when that worthy had so spoken of the old basket maker, ”Sir, the Interpreter is more than a character; he is a conviction, a conscience, an inst.i.tution.”

It was about the time when the patents on the new process were issued that the Interpreter--or Wallace Gordon, as he was then known--appeared from no one knows where, and went to work in the Mill. Because of the stranger's distinguished appearance, his evident culture, and his slightly foreign air, there were many who sought curiously to learn his history. But Wallace Gordon's history remained as it, indeed, remains still, an unopened book. Within a few months his ability to speak several of the various languages spoken by the immigrants who were drawn to the manufacturing city caused his fellow workers to call him the Interpreter.

Working at the same bench in the Mill with Adam Ward and Peter Martin, the Interpreter naturally saw much of the two families that, in those days, lived such close neighbors. Sober, hard working, modest in his needs, he acquired, during his first year in the Mill, that little plot of ground on the edge of the cliff, and built the tiny hut with its zigzag stairway. But often on a Sunday or a holiday, or for an hour of the long evenings after work, this man who was so alone in the world would seek companions.h.i.+p in the homes of his two workmen friends. The four children, who were so much together that their mothers used to say laughingly they could scarcely tell which were Wards and which were Martins, claimed the Interpreter as their own. With his never-failing fund of stories, his ultimate acquaintance with the fairies, his ready understanding of their childish interests, and his joyous comrades.h.i.+p in their sports, he won his own peculiar place in their hearts.

It was during the second year of his residence in Millsburgh that he adopted the deaf and dumb orphan boy, Billy Rand.

That such a workman should become a leader among his fellow workers was inevitable. More and more his advice and counsel were sought by those who toiled under the black cloud that rolled up in ever-increasing volumes from the roaring furnaces.

The accident which so nearly cost him his life occurred soon after the new process had taken Adam from his bench to a desk in the office of the Mill. Helen and John were away at school. At the hospital they asked him about his people. He smiled grimly and shook his head. When the surgeons were finally through with him, and it was known that he would live but could never stand on his feet again, he was still silent as to his family and his life before he came to the Mill. So they carried him around by the road on the hillside to his little hut on the top of the cliff where, with Billy Rand to help him, he made baskets and lived with his books, which he purchased as he could from time to time during the more profitable periods of his industry.