THE TWINS MEET BRUCE
Chance Carter, lying helpless on the stone steps of Turner Hall, was wondering if the doctor would ever come. Bob and George did their best to ease his pain, while Betty gazed anxiously down the street.
"Why doesn"t that doctor come?"
"Surely he knows where we are, Betty?"
"Yes, I told him Turner Hall, and he said, "Why, Turner Hall burned down last night, little girl." And I told him I knew it, and that we were waiting right beside what was left of it."
"Hm-m-m! Something must have happened to him then; he could have walked it in less time than this. If he doesn"t come pretty soon, we"d better call up the police department and have them send the ambulance. We can"t wait here much longer."
While they waited, an idea popped into Bob"s head.
"Look here," he said, "somebody else is likely enough to get hurt here, just the way Chance did. I believe we"d better put up a sign. I"ll get some paper from that store."
So Bob hurried around to the store and got some wrapping paper and nails and borrowed a pencil and hammer. He worked fast, the shopkeeper looking curiously over his shoulder while he lettered this sign:
DANGER!
These walls may fall on you any moment. One leg already broken here today. Keep out.
SAFETY FIRST!
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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration]