Bob had just finished the lettering when a big automobile came purring
along in front of the ruined building. The chauffeur was in uniform. The
big man inside looked almost lost among the cushions, so roomy was the
machine. At a word from him, the car slowed down, and he scanned the
ruins sharply. Bob knew him in a moment for Bruce, the great mill owner,
one of the richest men in the city.
"Hello, what's this? What's this?" Bruce stood up in the car when the
little group on the steps caught his eye. In a twinkling he was out of
the automobile and bending over the groaning boy, while Bob and George
and Betty told him what had happened.
"Tut, tut!" snapped the great man whose mills gave work to thousands of
men, the twins' father among them. "This won't do at all! If the doctor
won't come to him, we must get him to the doctor." Pushing aside the
chauffeur, he lifted Chance into the car and on to the deep, comfortable
cushions as easily as if he had been a child of two instead of a lad of
twelve and big for his age.
"Now, jump in, the rest of you," he said, "and we'll take him over to
Doctor MacArthur's."
Betty climbed in and George followed. The chauffeur took his seat and
looked around at Bob, waiting. "What's the matter now?" asked Bruce,
impatiently, as Bob lingered on the step.
"It's those walls," answered the boy. "I hate to leave them in that
shape--somebody else will be getting hurt just as Chance did. I'd better
put up the sign. You folks go on, please, and I'll follow on foot."
The mill owner shook his head. "Put up your sign and come along. We'll
wait."
Bruce looked sharply at Bob's sign as the boy nailed it up in place, but
said nothing. Bob climbed into the waiting automobile, and the big
machine rolled smoothly, silently to the doctor's office.
Doctor MacArthur, surgeon's case in hand, came out. He was a little gray
man--gray-haired, dressed in a gray suit, with keen gray eyes that
seemed to take in everything at once.
"Who put those splints on?" He jerked out the words like a pistol shot.
"I did," said Bob, reddening; for the doctor's tone made him feel that
he must have bungled his work.
Swiftly the doctor bared the leg and laid a deft finger on the exact
spot of the break. "Simple fracture," was his verdict. "Bone badly
splintered, though--would have come through the skin in short order if
you hadn't got the splints on when you did. Where does he live?"
He took George's seat and George climbed over beside the chauffeur. On
the way to Chance's house, he insisted on knowing how Bob had learned to
give First Aid to the injured.
"So you're a Boy Scout, eh?" Another keen glance from those sharp gray
eyes.
"N-no, sir--but I'm going to be."
"Eh? How's that?"
"He isn't quite old enough yet," explained George. "You have to be
twelve or over to join the Boy Scouts. I'm one--but Bob knows a heap
more about it already than I do," he added frankly.
"Ha! Well, I'll have to change my opinion of the Boy Scouts, young man.
I always took it for granted they were a sort of feeder to our regular
army--playing soldier, you know. But if this is the kind of work they
turn out, I don't know but I'll join myself."
George got out when they reached Chance's house, and helped the doctor
carry the injured lad up the steps. "You needn't wait for me," he told
the twins, "I'm going to stay a while."
"Come in and see me some time," Doctor MacArthur called back to Bob. "I
want you to tell me more about your First Aid work! See you later, Mr.
Bruce."
"Home, Jennings," said Bruce. "And be quick about it--I'm late."
Bob leaned back against the cushions and studied the grim, square-jawed
face of the great man whom everybody was so anxious to please. So this
was the way he looked at close range, this self-made, stubborn man of
millions who always managed to bend every other man in his line of
business to his own iron will! As he looked, Bob felt it was no wonder
they all feared him--feared and followed.
For Bruce was the man who, more than all the others put together, was
responsible for keeping Safety First work out of the mills in his line
of business. Hundreds of men were killed and thousands injured every
year in the great string of mills of which Bruce's was the head. Over
and over it had been pointed out to him that the same Safety First work
which had saved thousands of lives in other lines would save them in his
line as well. But he was stubborn, iron-willed.
"You're wasting your time," was all he would say. "No theories or
new-fangled notions in _my_ mills."
Because Bruce said this, all the other mills hung back, too. There were
reasons. They knew Bruce.
All this Bob knew from talks he had had with his father about the risks
of working in Bruce's mills. He understood it better, now that he was
face to face with Bruce himself.
All too soon, to the twins' way of thinking, the automobile drew up in
front of Bruce's big stone house. The mill owner wasted no words.
Jumping out, he waved his hand to the three, said to Jennings, "Take
them wherever they want to go," and hurried up the walk.
The eager face pressed against the big bay window disappeared, the front
door flew open, and a sweet little fair-haired girl threw herself into
Bruce's outstretched arms. "Daddy! What made you so late? Here I've been
waiting and waiting--"
"Bonnie!" That was all the twins heard as the big automobile bore them
away toward home. But the way he said it, and the way he caught his
little daughter to his big, broad chest, told Bob and Betty all they
needed to know about the soft spot in the millionaire's heart.
What did his great house and his mills and all his money amount to,
after all? He would gladly have thrown them all aside rather than have
the slightest harm come to his Bonnie; for her mother had died when
Bonnie was only a baby, and the little girl was all Bruce had left in
the world.
[Illustration]