“No, no,” demurred the girl. “What does it matter? It’s only another way around, and perhaps no longer than the other.”
The road turned and dropped again. The hill was steeper now. The air grew heavy and fanned Margaret’s cheek with a warm breath as if from an oven. Unconsciously she loosened the coat at her throat.
“Why, how warm it is!” she exclaimed.
“Yes. I fancy there’s no doubt now where we are,” frowned Brandon. “I thought as much,” he finished as the car swung around a curve.
Straight ahead the road ran between lines of squat brown houses with men, women, and children swarming on the door-steps or hanging on the fences. Beyond rose tier upon tier of red and brown roofs flanked on the left by the towering chimneys of the mills. Still farther beyond and a little to the right, just where the sky was reddest, rose the terraced slopes of Prospect Hill crowned by the towers and turrets of Hilcrest.
“We can at least see where we want to be,” laughed Brandon. “Fine old place—shows up great against that sky; doesn’t it?”
The girl at his side did not answer. Her eyes had widened a little, and her cheeks had lost their bright color. She was not looking at the pile of brick and stone on top of Prospect Hill, but at the ragged little urchins and pallid women that fell back from the roadway before the car. The boys yelled derisively, and a baby cried. Margaret shrank back in her seat, and Brandon, turning quickly, saw the look on her face. His own jaw set into determined lines.
“We’ll be out of this soon, Miss Kendall,” he assured her. “You mustn’t mind them. As if it wasn’t bad enough to come here anyway but that I must needs come now just when the day-shift is getting home!”
“The day-shift?”
“Yes; the hands who work days, you know.”