The big man slowly turned it over in his mind. Finally he said:
“I will tell you all I know, but it is not very much. There is another little boy named McGinnis who is around with him most of the time. The McGinnis boy worked at the ball park until the season closed last week. For ten days now he has been coming here for a glass of beer pretty often, and he always carries away the lunch. You say you want to help George?”
Halloran nodded.
“Well, I will tell you what I think.” He used the word “think,” but his expression showed that he knew pretty nearly the facts. “McGinnis has an uncle, a boat-builder, who has a place under the Wells Street Bridge. You go down there and you will learn more than I can tell you.”
Halloran thanked him and returned to Miss Davies, Mrs. Craig, he found, was getting ready to go back to work. They were all waiting anxiously for him.
“I think we are started right,” he said cheerily, addressing the mother. “I will be back later in the evening and report progress.” To Miss Davies he said: “You would rather wait at the Settlement, I suppose. I shan't be back probably before eight or nine o'clock.”
“Why,” she said in a low voice as they were passing out the door, “don't you want me to go with you?”
“I am afraid not. I could hardly take you prowling around the wharves at night.” And he told her, as they went down the stairs behind Mrs. Craig, what directions the saloon-keeper had given him. They were still talking about it when they joined the woman on the sidewalk; and then the three of them walked together to the second corner, talking it over and over again. For Mrs. Craig was beginning to discover that the young people were downright interested in her and in her boy. There was no gracious down-reaching here, no lending a kind hand to the unfortunate; but just a young woman who believed she could help, and a young man who knew a little of what it all meant; in short, here were two real persons who said little and meant more. She was not afraid, as she looked at them, that they would pray for her, loudly and zealously, kneeling on the floor of her own tenement rooms. And she was inclined to wonder, looking out at them across her own sea of troubles, what life was to hold for them.
Something of this last thought got into her manner as she took their hands at parting; indeed, her reserve so nearly broke that she gave them—not singly, but the two of them together—a look that brought a faint blush to the young woman's cheek and to her mind other thoughts than George and his difficulties—-thoughts that disturbed her a little later when she and Halloran were walking toward the Settlement, so foolish and trivial were they beside the realities of the scene that had passed—thoughts that were resolutely put from her mind.
At the Settlement steps she lingered a moment.