Freckles looked the Boss in the eyes and began to laugh.
“Well thank heaven!” said McLean.
“Now it’s me turn,” said Freckles. “I don’t know as I ought to be asking you, and yet I can’t see a reason good enough to keep me from it. It’s a thing I’ve had on me mind every hour since I’ve had time to straighten things out a little. May I be asking you a question?”
McLean reached over and took Freckles’ hand. His voice was shaken with feeling as he replied: “Freckles, you almost hurt me. Will you never learn how much you are to me—how happy you make me in coming to me with anything, no matter what?”
“Then it’s this,” said Freckles, gripping the hand of McLean strongly. “If this accident, and all that’s come to me since, had never happened, where was it you had planned to send me to school? What was it you meant for me to do?”
“Why, Freckles,” answered McLean, “I’m scarcely prepared to state definitely. My ideas were rather hazy. I thought we would make a beginning and see which way things went. I figured on taking you to Grand Rapids first, and putting you in the care of my mother. I had an idea it would be best to secure a private tutor to coach you for a year or two, until you were ready to enter Ann Arbor or the Chicago University in good shape. Then I thought we’d finish in this country at Yale or Harvard, and end with Oxford, to get a good, all-round flavor.”
“Is that all?” asked Freckles.
“No; that’s leaving the music out,” said McLean. “I intended to have your voice tested by some master, and if you really were endowed for a career as a great musician, and had inclinations that way, I wished to have you drop some of the college work and make music your chief study. Finally, I wanted us to take a trip through Europe and clear around the circle together.”
“And then what?” queried Freckles breathlessly.
“Why, then,” said McLean, “you know that my heart is hopelessly in the woods. I never will quit the timber business while there is timber to handle and breath in my body. I thought if you didn’t make a profession of music, and had any inclination my way, we would stretch the partnership one more and take you into the firm, placing your work with me. Those plans may sound jumbled in the telling, but they have grown steadily on me, Freckles, as you have grown dear to me.”
Freckles lifted anxious and eager eyes to McLean.
“You told me once on the trail, and again when we thought that I was dying, that you loved me. Do these things that have come to me make any difference in any way with your feeing toward me?”
“None,” said McLean. “How could they, Freckles? Nothing could make me love you more, and you never will do anything that will make me love you less.”
“Glory be to God!” cried Freckles. “Glory to the Almighty! Hurry and be telling your mother I’m coming! Just as soon as I can get on me feet I’ll be taking that ring to me Angel, and then I’ll go to Grand Rapids and be making me start just as you planned, only that I can be paying me own way. When I’m educated enough, we’ll all—the Angel and her father, the Bird Woman, you, and me—all of us will go together and see me house and me relations and be taking that trip. When we get back, we’ll add O’More to the Lumber Company, and golly, sir, but we’ll make things hum! Good land, sir! Don’t do that! Why, Mr. McLean, dear Boss, dear father, don’t be doing that! What is it?”
“Nothing, nothing!” boomed McLean’s deep bass; “nothing at all!”
He abruptly turned, and hurried to the window.
“This is a mighty fine view,” he said. “Lake’s beautiful this morning. No wonder Chicago people are so proud of their city’s location on its shore. But, Freckles, what is Lord O’More going to say to this?”
“I don’t know,” said Freckles. “I am going to be cut deep if he cares, for he’s been more than good to me, and Lady Alice is next to me Angel. He’s made me feel me blood and race me own possession. She’s talked to me by the hour of me father and mother and me grandmother. She’s made them all that real I can lay claim to them and feel that they are mine. I’m very sorry to be hurting them, if it will, but it can’t be changed. Nobody ever puts the width of the ocean between me and the Angel. From here to the Limberlost is all I can be bearing peaceable. I want the education, and then I want to work and live here in the country where I was born, and where the ashes of me father and mother rest.
“I’ll be glad to see Ireland, and glad especial to see those little people who are my kin, but I ain’t ever staying long. All me heart is the Angel’s, and the Limberlost is calling every minute. You’re thinking, sir, that when I look from that window I see the beautiful water, ain’t you? I’m not.
“I see soft, slow clouds oozing across the blue, me big black chickens hanging up there, and a great feather softly sliding down. I see mighty trees, swinging vines, bright flowers, and always masses of the wild roses, with the wild rose face of me Ladybird looking through. I see the swale rocking, smell the sweetness of the blooming things, and the damp, mucky odor of the swamp;
