“Is it so bad as that?” questioned the girl. “You don’t want me to see all these things? All the more reason why I should, then! If conditions are bad, help is needed; but before help can be effectual, or even given at all, the conditions must be understood. That is what I mean to do—understand the conditions. How many children are there employed in the mills, please?”
McGinnis hesitated.
“Well, there are some—hundreds,” he acknowledged. “Of course many of them are twelve and fourteen and fifteen, and that is bad enough; but there are others younger. You see the age limit of this state is lower than some. Many parents bring their children here to live, so that they can put them into the mills.”
Margaret shuddered.
“Then it is true, as Patty said. There are children there nine and ten years old!”
“Yes, even younger than that, I fear. Only last week I turned away a man who brought a puny little thing with a request for work. He swore she was twelve. I’d hate to tell you how old—or rather, how young, she really looked. I sent him home with a few remarks which I hope he will remember. She was only one, however, out of many. I am not always able to do what I would like to do in such cases—I am not the only man at the mills. You must realize that.”
“Yes, I realize it, and I understand why you can’t always do what you wish. But just suppose you tell me now some of the things you would like to do—if you could.” And she smiled encouragement straight into his eyes until in spite of his stern resolve he forgot himself and his surroundings, and began to talk.
Robert McGinnis was no silver-tongued orator, but he knew his subject, and his heart was in it. For long months he had been battling alone against the evils that had little by little filled his soul with horror. Accustomed heretofore only to rebuffs and angry denunciations of his “officious meddling,” he now suddenly found a tenderly sympathetic ear eagerly awaiting his story, and a pair of luminous blue eyes already glistening with unshed tears.
No wonder McGinnis talked, and talked well. He seemed to be speaking to the Maggie of long ago—the little girl who stood ready and anxious to “divvy up” with all the world. Then suddenly his eyes fell on the rich folds of the girl’s dress, and on the velvety pile of the rug beneath her feet.
“I have said too much,” he broke off sharply, springing to his feet. “I forgot myself.”