Chapter 4 PROBLEMS

Although temporarily buoyed up by the episode of the afternoon Carl McGregor returned home with spirits at a lower ebb than they had been for many a day. To be out of work was a very real tragedy in the world in which he lived. He knew only too well how indispensable was money and that the necessity of it was even greater in the Harling home than in his own. The Harlings, alas, had no absent Uncle Frederick to fall back upon. On the contrary the entire upkeep of their home and family fell upon the young shoulders of the boy and girl who toiled at the spinning mills.

Now with Louise out of the race Hal would be left alone with all the burden, and whether he would be able to carry so heavy a one was a question. Undoubtedly he would not be forced to bear it for long. Louise would find employment-she must find it. Did not the need compel it? And was she not far too capable a worker to be out of a place? Why, scores of people would seek her help eagerly when once it was known her assistance was available.

Sound as these arguments were, however, facts did not bear them out. Apparently nobody in Baileyville wished help, no matter how excellent its quality. Every night the report from the Harlings was the same-Louise could find nothing to do. Even Mrs. McGregor who was ordinarily able to straighten out every sort of tangle had no remedy for the present pitiable dilemma. The only employment it was in her power to secure for the girl was fine sewing and Louise, restricted by her factory training, could not sew. A week went by and still nothing presented itself. Mrs. Harling and the aged grandfather, from whom the calamity had been kept as long as it was possible to conceal it, at length took up the worry.

"Whatever is going to become of us now?" bewailed each in turn. "Where's the food and rent coming from?"

Hal fidgeted.

Every day he looked more harrowed and distressed, and the smile that had formerly come so spontaneously came now with an effort. He had taken on an extra job evenings, that of delivery boy for the local grocer. It did not bring in much, to be sure, and it kept him on his feet at the end of the day when often he was too tired to stand. However, all these disadvantages were lost sight of in the few additional dollars derived from the makeshift.

"Mother says you can't keep this up, old chap," remarked Carl dismally. "She says you will be getting tired out and sick and then where will you be?"

"But we've got to have the cash, kid! Got to have it, don't you see? It was I who landed us in this plight and I'm the one to get us out. It's nobody's fault but mine."

Carl sighed.

"I suppose Corcoran wouldn't--"

"Take Louise back if I were to humble myself," flared Hal. "Do you think for a moment I'd ask him? Do you imagine I'd gratify him by letting him know how hard he'd hit us? Not on your life! For all he knows the Harlings are rich as mud and don't care a hurrah for his old job. I want him to think that too. If he pictures me eating out of his hand he's mistaken."

Carl looked grave.

"It is all very well to be proud," affirmed he, smiling at his friend's characteristic attitude of mind. "But sometimes you can't afford to be too cocky. If, as you say, you pitched into Corcoran and were wrong--"

"But I wasn't wrong," broke in Hal. "I meant every word I said; it was the truth and I'd say it again if I got the chance. You'd have said the same yourself if you'd been there. The thing that got his goat was that it was true."

"But you can't go round telling people the truth about themselves, old man," observed Carl with a wisdom far beyond his years. "They won't stand for it."

"I'll bet I would. I'd a darn sight rather a person told me straight to my face what he thought of me than whispered it behind my back."

"That's what I'm trying to do now," grinned Carl.

Young Harling's lips curved into a smile.

"Why, so you are, kid," returned he. "I didn't recognize the stunt at first. You're a mighty white little chap, Carl. Maybe I was wrong to light into Corcoran as I did. Of course he is my superior and I really had no business to sarse him, even if he was wrong. But he is such a cad! It made my blood boil to hear him berate that poor little Mayo girl-and for something she did not do, too."

"I know."

"Well, if you were in this mess what would you do? Come now. Give me some of your sage advice."

"You don't suppose you ought to go to--"

"Corcoran and apologize?" interrupted Hal hotly. "No, I don't. I'd starve before I'd do that."

"But how about your grandfather, your mother, and Louise?"

"I shan't let them starve, if that's what you mean. You can bet your life on that," cried Hal. "If anybody goes without it will be myself."

"You seem to be doing it all right."

"How do you know?"

"Don't you suppose I've eyes in my head? You're thin as a rail already."

"Huh! That's only because I've been chasing round with bundles. I was too fat, anyway; didn't get enough exercise at the mills."

"Hal Harling!"

"Straight goods, I didn't. Just stood and fed stuff into that loom from morning till night. You don't call that exercise, do you?"

"I noticed that by night you were often all in, exercise or no exercise," was the dry response. "Well, you've got to go your own gait, I guess."

"I'll bet a hat you wouldn't go and bow down to Corcoran."

The thrust told.

"Bow down to him? I'd crack his nut!"

Hal chuckled with satisfaction at his chum's loyalty.

"There you are, you see!" declared he. "You are every whit as rabid as I am when it comes to the scratch."

"I'm afraid I'm more rabid when things hit you and Louise," murmured Carl.

The two walked on without speaking, the mind of each busy with the problem in hand.

Carl's imagination circled every mad avenue of escape from the Harlings' financial crisis. If only he were rich! If only somebody would suddenly leave him some money! If only-his brain halted in the midst of its absurd gyrations.

If he were not rich; if he had no fairy fortune to pass over to Hal and Louise, what was to hinder him from performing for them a far more genuine service of friendship and affection? Instead of offering them money that was dropped into his hand why should he not test out his real regard for them by earning it? Many a boy his age, aye, younger than he, earned money. Why should he be free of responsibility when Hal, who was only a few years older, was weighed down with it?

Just why it had never occurred to him that if he earned money he might with propriety hand it over to his own hard-working mother is a question. Often with eyes fixed on the clouds we lose sight of the things just beneath our noses. Perhaps that was the explanation of Carl's lack of thought. Be that as it may, certain it was that he parted from his chum afire with the generous impulse of making a personal effort to reinforce the Harlings' slender income.

He was only a stone's throw from home and what led him to turn the other way, pass into Beaver Street, and go south toward Orient Avenue he could not have told. Possibly he was still thrilling with newly awakened altruism and was not yet ready to have his roseate dreams disturbed. Or he may have been pondering so deeply how to put his impulses into action that he failed to heed just where he was going. At any rate before he realized it there he was in the fashionable section of the village, walking along between rows of bare and stately elms and great rambling houses glimpsed from behind high brick walls.

He had not been in this part of Baileyville for months. There was nothing to take him there. What connection had his life with those fortunate lives that made leisure and luxury things to be taken for granted? Even now he started at finding himself in a location so incongruous; or rather at finding so incongruous a person as himself in an environment so out of harmony with his thought and station.

He whirled about to start homeward and it was just at this instant that a trim racing car drew up beside him and a man's voice inquired pleasantly:

"Lost your way, youngster?"

Carl glanced at the speaker.

He was a gray-haired, clean-shaven man, with fresh color and keen blue eyes. Although muffled to the chin in a raccoon coat that almost met the fur of his cap there was a splendid vigor about him that breathed health, energy, and the rewards a temperate life brings. Everything about him seemed clearness personified-eye, complexion, voice.

"I've not lost my way, thank you, sir," Carl answered. "I just got to thinking and have wandered farther from home than I meant to."

"Are you going back to town now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Jump in and I'll give you a lift."

Raising the fur robes invitingly the stranger reached to open the door.

Carl was almost too surprised to speak.

"You're very kind, sir," he contrived to stammer. "I should be glad of a ride. I don't often get one. Besides, I ought to have been at home long ago."

The honesty of the reply apparently pleased the motorist for, smiling, he tucked the lad in and asked:

"Where do you live?"

"At Mulberry Court, sir."

"I'm afraid I don't quite know where that is."

"Very likely not. It's a little tenement house off Minton Street. Maybe you never were there."

"I guess I never was," the man replied simply.

"It's a nice place to live," continued Carl, glowing with local pride. "Of course it isn't like this. We've no trees. But in winter trees aren't much good anyway; and in summer we can go to the parks."

To this philosophic observation his companion agreed with a nod and they sped on in silence.

The vast stretches of snow, so unsightly in the city's narrow thoroughfares, were on every hand white and sparkling, and each little shrub rearing its head out of the spangled fields was laden with ermine.

The boy drew a long breath, drinking in the crystal air.

"Gee!" he burst out impulsively. "This is great. I feel cheered up already."

The man driving the car shot him a quiet smile.

"I'm glad to hear that," said he. "So you were out of spirits, were you?"

"I was fussed within an inch of my life," owned Carl with engaging candor.

"In wrong somewhere?"

"Oh, I'm not; but my chum is."

"What's the matter?"

"Why, you see his sister has just been fired from Davis and Coulter's mills. It wasn't her fault at all, either. Her brother gave the foreman, Corcoran, a jawing because he got too fresh with one of the girls. Corcoran didn't say a word at the time but a couple of weeks later he took out his spite on Hal Harling's sister, Louise. I suppose he was mad and decided on this way to get even."

"Humph!"

"Maybe he thought he'd take Hal's pride down and make him come crawling to him on his knees to get Louise back into the mills. It is a rotten time to be out of work. Louise has tried and tried to get another job and can't land a thing. But whether she does or not, her brother isn't going crawling to Corcoran. He's not afraid of the old tyrant. Hal Harling isn't afraid of anything. Why, only the other day he tore into the street and saved a little runaway chap from being mashed to jelly under a lot of automobiles. The baby was chasing a dog and got into the middle of High Street before he realized it. He would certainly have been killed had it not been for Hal."

"Whose baby was it?" questioned the man beside him in an odd voice.

"Oh, I don't know. We didn't wait to see. Hal was anxious to get out of the crowd and we were late home anyway. So Harling gave the kid to the nursemaid and lit out."

There was a muffled: "I see!" from his listener.

"And where do you come in in all this tangle?" queried the stranger presently.

"I? Why, you see Hal Harling is my--" a sudden reserve fell upon the lad. It was impossible to explain to anybody just what Hal Harling was to him. "I chase round with the Harlings a lot," explained he. "They are almost like my own family."

"Oh, so that's it!"

"I'd decided just now to hunt for a job and see if I couldn't make good the money Louise is missing. She can't seem to find a darn thing to do, poor kid. She's been out of work over a week now and they've got to have money or Mrs. Harling and Grandfather Harling will starve to death. Of course I'm not so much," continued Carl modestly. "But I'm willing to work and I'm sure I could earn something."

The owner of the velvet-wheeled car did not speak at once. Then he remarked abruptly:

"You don't go to school to-morrow, do you?"

"Saturday? Not on your-no, sir."

"Then you'd be free to come to my office to-morrow morning and see me, wouldn't you?"

"Do you think you could give me a job? Sure I'd come!" ejaculated Carl with zest.

"Good! Come to the Berwick building, Number 197 Dalby Street, to-morrow at ten o'clock. Give your name and-by the by, what is your name?"

"Carl McGregor, sir."

"A fine old Scotch name. Well, you write it on a card or a piece of paper and give it to the man you will find at the door. Maybe I shall be able to do something for you."

The car rolled up to the curb and stopped.

"You've been mighty kind, sir," said Carl, as he leaped out. "You've brought me nearly home."

"Oh, I was going this way anyway," smiled the man in the fur coat. "You won't have far to walk now, will you?"

"Only a block. I'll be home in a jiffy."

"You won't forget about to-morrow."

"Forget!"

Laughing at something that evidently amused him very much the stranger started his engine.

As for Carl, he raced home as fast as ever his feet would go. Already he was late for supper, a fact always annoying to his mother, who considered tardiness one of the most flagrant of sins. To be sure he was not often late, for miss what other functions he might he seldom missed his meals. To-night, however, the table had been cleared, the dishes washed, and only a saucepan of corn-meal mush, steaming on the back of the stove, remained as a souvenir of the feast.

"For goodness' sake, Carl, wherever have you been?" asked Mrs. McGregor, as he entered, panting from his run up the long flights of stairs. "I've been worried to death about you. Go wash your hands and come and eat your supper right away. You know I don't like you out after dark."

"I know it, Ma," the boy responded penitently. "I'm mighty sorry. I'd no idea, though, that it was so late."

"Where've you been?"

"To walk."

"To walk? Just to walk? Mercy on us! Not just walking round for nothing!"

"I'm afraid so, yes."

"Who was with you?"

"Nobody."

For an instant Mrs. McGregor looked searchingly at her son.

"Well, did you ever hear the like of that!" commented she, addressing the younger children who clustered about their brother with curiosity. "What set you to go walking?"

"I don't know, Ma. Just a freak, I guess."

"A foolish freak-worrying the whole family, delaying supper, and what not. Now come and eat your porridge without more delay. Mary, go bring the milk; and, Timmie, you fetch a clean saucer from the pantry. Martin, stop pestering your brother until he eats something; he'll play with you and Nell by and by. Such a noisy lot of bairns as you are! If you're not careful you'll wake James Frederick."

Nevertheless, in spite of her grumbling, the mother regarded her brood of clamoring youngsters with affectionate pride. They were indeed a husky group, red-cheeked, high-spirited, and happy; their chatter, as she well knew, was nothing more than the normal exuberance of childhood.

While Carl hungrily devoured his big bowlful of cereal his mother continued her sewing. She was working on a film of blue material a-glitter with silver beads that twinkled from its folds like stars. Every now and then little Nell, fascinated by the sparkle of the fabric, would start toward the corner where her mother sat in the ring of brilliant lamplight.

Instantly one of the older brothers or sisters would intercept the child, catching up the wriggling mite and explaining softly:

"No, dearie, no! Nell must not trouble mother. Mother's working."

It was an old, oft-repeated formula which every one of the little group had heard from the time he had been able to toddle. Familiar, too, was the picture of their mother seated in the circle of light, her basket of gayly hued spools beside her, and a cloud of shimmering splendor wreathing her feet. Sometimes this glory was pink; sometimes it was blue, lavender, or yellow; not infrequently it was black or a smoky mist of gray. The children always delighted in the brighter colors, crowding round with eagerness whenever a new gown was brought home to see what hue the exciting parcel might contain.

"Oh, nothing but a sleepy old gray one this time!" Timmie would bewail. "And gray beads, too! Do hurry up, Ma, and get it done so we can have something else."

But let the paper disclose a brilliant blue or a red tulle and instantly every child clapped his hands.

Exultantly they examined the scintillating jet or iridescent sequins.

"Oh, this is the best yet, Ma!" Carl would cry. "It's a peach of a dress."

Their ingenious admiration did much to transform their mother's tedious task into a fine art and helped her to regard it with dignity. Certainly its influence on the characters of her children was inestimable. Not alone did it answer their craving for beauty, but far better than this ?sthetic gratification was the education it gave them in thoughtfulness and unselfishness. Consideration for their mother, restraint, independence, all emerged out of the yards of foolish gauze and the frivolous spangles.

Therefore Mrs. McGregor sewed on serene in spirit and if, as to-night, her task barred her from secrets her children might amid greater leisure have bestowed on her, the circumstance was accepted as one of the unavoidable disadvantages attending constant occupation.

It was regrettable she had not more time to talk with her sons and daughters separately. Confidences were shy and volatile things that could not be delivered in a hurry or hastily fitted into the chinks of a busy day. Confidences depended on mood and could not be regulated so that they would be forthcoming in the few seconds snatched between one duty and another.

As a result it came about that after Carl had swallowed his supper, frolicked with the younger children and helped Mary put them to bed, brought in the kindlings and coal for the morning fire, it was time for him to tumble in between the sheets himself, and he did so without mentioning to his mother or any one else his adventures of the afternoon or his morrow's appointment with the stranger.

One does not always wish to relate his affairs before five small brothers and sisters whose little ears drink in the story and whose tiny tongues are liable artlessly to repeat it.

In the McGregor household there was affection and happiness; but, alas, there was no such thing as privacy.