“Yes. Dr. Darrow took him there, several years ago, and begged employment for him, and your dear father, I understand from Glen, has been especially kind to him. Your father had a high respect for Dr. Darrow, who did a great deal of quiet charity among the mill workers. But the doctor, unfortunately, had no social standards whatever, and that one must always deplore, and now that he is gone I shall try to guide poor Glen— This impossible friendship, for instance——”
“What is his name?”
Miss Ada Tenafee stared at her young kinswoman. The girl had halted and was gazing back. “Why—Manders, Luke Manders. He——”
“Luke Manders!” Nancy repeated in her languid, sweet voice. “Isn’t that quaint, Cousin Ada? It sounds like a story, doesn’t it?”
“Well, possibly it does,” Miss Ada grudged. “It has not occurred to me, however. The doctor admitted this young savage to his household as an equal—he idealized him in the most absurd way, and prophesied the most impossibly brilliant future for him—but now that Glen is alone, I shall try, tactfully, of course, because the child is loyal to her father and his ideas to the point of fanaticism, to give her a better sense of values. And your—graciousness to her to-day, Nancy, honey, will mean more than you can possibly——”
Nancy Carey was looking at that moment even more like a maiden in a ballad than usual; there was a melting sweetness in her hazel gaze and with a distinct sense of shock the shabby teacher heard her say, with soft fervor—“Cousin Ada, I think he’s the handsomest thing I ever saw in my life....”
CHAPTER VI
Mr. ’Gene Carey finds a right-hand man for the Altonia, and Glen Darrow joins the noble army of labor.
IF Dr. Darrow, in the celestial realms of whose actuality he had expressed a deathbed doubt, was cognizant of terrestrial affairs he must have grinned triumphantly and complacently over Luke Mander’s swift fulfillment of his prophesies. His progress was little short of being marvelous. He had galloped through business college at a speed which broke all their comfortable records, and his rapid rise at the mill was a never-ending wonder to his fellow workers. He was silent, tireless; he was the first one at work in the morning and the last one to leave at night; work was an obsession with him, a rapture and a dear delight.
“By gad,” ejaculated Mr. ’Gene Carey to his superintendent, “you know that boy likes to work! He does, by the eternal! And you listen to me, Ben, I want him pushed on, fast as he can go!”
The middle-aged and work-weary superintendent was nothing loath. The genial and gentle old owner knew very little more about the actual working of his mill than his daughter did, far away in her Northern finishing school, and Ben Birdsall, a dour and conscientious employee, carried all the load. He was an industrious, slow-minded, well-meaning creature, and after the death of the old superintendent and his own promotion from foreman he had felt decidedly out of his depths.