Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/127

 I wasn't sure; so I asked one of my ancients if he had ever heard of a Professor Warren. He had. Now, Miss Warren, you don't have to tell William Grogan anything. It isn't because I was just curious. That wasn't it at all. But I thought if I was really your friend I might help you—that is, if you were in any kind of trouble where a friend could help." He spoke depreciatingly, but there was a fine light in his eyes. "I take it that you're all alone, like I am. If you'd had a brother or a family, why, I'd 've shied off."

The girl's heart grew suddenly and gratefully warm. Until this moment she had not believed that such a man existed outside of one's fancy. It was so easy and simple for man to pass on, eying askance all burdens save his own and seldom offering to give others a lift unless impelled by self-interest. His face no longer provoked her sense of the comic; some light, very fine and lofty, seemed to shine through it. The tears which had hung desperately to her eyelids, lost hold, tumbled and plashed upon the book and the hands which clasped it.

"I want you for my friend, Mr. Grogan. I can't say very much. I'm a little choked up just now. My father! And this book was his life, a part of the thing he strove so valiantly to attain. Half the time he never realized that I was living in the same house with him. So there are still some men of intellect who remember what he did? Thank you for letting me know that."

"Then you're going to let me be a real friend,