Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/229

Rh wouldn't have been there only for this Mister—"

He stopped short.

"Mister?" said the young man, interrogatively.

"I guess I'd better not tell you his name, after sayin' what I have about him. I'm more willin' now to think he may be all right. When I write 'nd let him know, perhaps he'll do the square thing. You've treated me so straight I've got some heart in me again. I'll get up and dress, 'nd you land me at the first point it's convenient. And—I'd like to see your little girl again before I go," he said, shyly.

"Why, of course," said the young man, cheerfully. "I wonder they've kept her away as long as they have."

He went himself and got her. She was crisply attired in some more white clothes, and though her hair was a little wet and stringy, her smile and eyes were as bright and friendly as ever. She walked with dignity to John, and put her small hands on his knees.

"Thank you for not lettin' me drown," she said, regarding him with grateful admiration. She put up her flower-like face at an angle that seemed to invite something which her active mind conceived as the next thing in order. Poor MacDowell was abashed, and a bit conscious of how red and rough his hands looked with the tiny, dimpled ones of "Badness" resting on them. He glanced at the young man.

"I think she wants to kiss you," said that fond parent with perfect calmness. "She is enough of a woman already to seem to think a man enjoys that sort of favor from her sex. You'd better let her, I think."

John MacDowell lifted the dainty child to his knees, his blue eyes bent on her with the look that Galahad's must have had when fixed upon the Holy Grail. She put her hands upon his neck and pressed her soft lips to his mouth, then smiled again, as if at her shameless sweetness. John pressed his own lips on her smooth cheek, and replaced her on the floor.

"Now go to your mamma and tell her you're getting old enough to be watched already when you carry on like this with strange gentlemen," said her father. "I'm going home with him, and you'll probably see him again later."

Though John protested against such extravagant courtesy, the young fellow did go home with him, and got a very adequate grasp of the whole situation. He left John sixty dollars when he went away, and—what was more grateful to John—he came to Mrs. MacDowell's funeral the next day, and sat in the pew with John and the little girls, as if he were one of the family.

Soon after this John MacDowell and his motherless bairns went to live in a small, ivy-covered cottage on the young man's place, with softly swaying elms about it, and birds whistling in their leafy boughs as if life was nothing but a holiday. John was under-gardener. Then the agent, who had had his own method of collecting rents, was discharged by Mr. Vanderhoff. But before this, John had learned with pleasant surprise that this was the name of his host on the yacht.