Chapter 36

Bobby McGinnis wondered sometimes that summer why he was not happier. Viewed from the standpoint of an outsider, he surely had enough to make any man happy. He was young, strong, and in a position of trust and profit. He was, moreover, engaged to the girl he loved, and that girl was everything that was good and beautiful, and he saw her almost every day. All this Bobby knew—and still he wondered.

He saw a good deal of Margaret these days. Their engagement had come to be an accepted fact, and the first flurry of surprise and comment had passed. The Mill House, with Patty in charge, was steadily progressing. Margaret had taken up her work again with fresh zest, but, true to her promise to Mrs. Merideth, she spent many a day, and sometimes two or three days at Hilcrest. All this, however, did not interfere with Bobby’s seeing her—for he, too, went to Hilcrest in accordance with Margaret’s express wishes.

“But, Bobby,” Margaret had said in response to his troubled remonstrances, “are you not going to be my husband? Of course you are! Then you must come to meet my friends.” And Bobby went.

Bobby McGinnis found himself in a new position then. He was Mr. Robert McGinnis, the accepted suitor of Miss Margaret Kendall, and as such, he was introduced to Margaret’s friends.

It was just here, perhaps, that misery began for Bobby. He was not more at ease in his new, well-fitting evening clothes than he would have been in the garb of Sing Sing; nor did he feel less conspicuous among the gay throng about Margaret’s chair than he would if he had indeed worn the prison stripes.