Georgie's true knight, as it happened, was to come from a quarter little suspected by Mrs. St. John. For the spare afternoons of this second winter Georgie had reserved rather a large piece of work, which had the advantage that it could be taken up at will and laid down when convenient. This was the cataloguing of a valuable library belonging to Mr. Constant Carrington. That gentleman had observed Georgie rather closely as she went about her various avocations, and had formed so high an opinion of what he was pleased to term her "executive ability," that he made a high bid for her services in preference to those of any one else.
She was sitting in this library one rainy day in January, beside a big packing-case, with a long row of books on the table, which she was dusting, classifying, and noting on the list in her lap, when the door opened and a tall young man came in. Georgie glanced at him vaguely, as at a stranger; then recognizing an old friend, she jumped up, exclaiming, "Why Bob Mr. Curtis, how do you do? I had no idea that you were here."
Bob Curtis looked bewildered. He had reached Sandyport only that morning. No one had chanced to mention Georgie or the change in her fortunes, and for a moment he failed to recognize in the white-aproned, dusty-fingered vision before him the girl whom he had known so well five years previously.
"It is? why it is," he exclaimed. "Miss Georgie, how delighted I am to see you! I was coming down to call as soon as I could find out where you were. My aunt said nothing about your being in the house."
"Very likely she did not know. I am in and out so often here that I do not always see Mrs. Carrington."
"Indeed!" Bob looked more puzzled than ever. He had not remembered that there was any such close intimacy in the old days between the two families.
"I can't shake hands, I am too dusty," went on Georgie. "But I am very glad indeed to see you again."
She too was taking mental notes, and observing that her former friend had lost somewhat of the gloss and brilliance of his boyish days; that his coat was not of the last cut; and that his expression was spiritless, not to say discontented. "Poor fellow!" she thought.
"What on earth does it all mean?" meditated Bob on his part.
"These books only came yesterday," said Georgie, indicating the big box with a wave of the hand.
"I have had to dust them all; and I find that Italian dust sticks just as the American variety does, and makes the fingers just as black." A little laugh.
"What are you doing, if I may be so bold as to ask?"
"Cataloguing your uncle's library. He has been buying quantities of books for the last two years, as perhaps you know. He has a man in Germany and another in Paris and another in London, who purchase for him, and the boxes are coming over almost every week now. A great case full of the English ones arrived last Saturday, such beauties! Look at that Ruskin behind you. It is the first edition, with all the plates, worth its weight in gold."
"It's awfully good of you to take so much trouble, I'm sure," remarked Mr. Curtis politely, still with the same mystified look.
"Not at all," replied Georgie, coolly. "It's all in my line of business, you know. Mr. Carrington is to give me a hundred dollars for the job; which is excellent pay, because I can take my own time for doing it, and work at odd moments."
Her interlocutor looked more perplexed than ever. A distinct embarrassment became visible in his manner at the words "job" and "pay."
"Certainly," he said. Then coloring a little he frankly went on, "I don't understand a bit. Would you mind telling me what it all means?"
"Oh, you haven't happened to hear of my 'befalments,' as Miss Sally Scannell would call them."
"I did hear of your mother's death," said Bob, gently, "and I was truly sorry. She was so kind to me always in the old days."
"She was kind to everybody. I am glad you were sorry," said Georgie, bright tears in the eyes which she turned with a grateful look on Bob. "Well, that was the beginning of it all."
There was another pause, during which Bob pulled his moustache nervously! Then he drew a chair to the table and sat down.
"Can you talk while you're working?" he asked. "And mayn't I help? It seems as though I might at least lift those books out for you. Now, if you don't mind, if it isn't painful, won't you tell me what has happened to you, for I see that something has happened."
"A great deal has happened, but it isn't painful to tell about it. Things were puzzling at first, but they have turned out wonderfully; and I'm rather proud of the way they have gone."
So, little by little, with occasional interruptions for lifting out books and jotting down titles, she told her story, won from point to point by the eager interest which her companion showed in the narrative. When she had finished, he brought his hand down heavily on the table.
"I'll tell you what," he exclaimed with vigorous emphasis, "it's most extraordinary that a girl should do as you have done. You're an absolute little brick, if you'll excuse the phrase. But it makes a fellow it makes me more ashamed of myself than I've often been in my life before."
"But why, why should you be ashamed?"
"Oh, I've been having hard times too," explained Bob, gloomily. "But I haven't been so plucky as you. I've minded them more."
Georgie knew vaguely something of these "hard times." In the "old days," five years before, when she was seventeen and he a Harvard Junior of twenty, spending a long vacation with his uncle, and when they had rowed and danced and played tennis together so constantly as to set people to wondering if anything "serious" was likely to arise from the intimacy, the world with all its opportunities and pleasures seemed open to the heir of the Curtis family. Bob's father was rich, the family influential, there seemed nothing that he might not command at will.
Then all was changed suddenly; a great financial panic swept away the family fortunes in a few weeks. Mr. Curtis died insolvent, and Robert was called on to give up many half-formed wishes and ambitions, and face the stern realities. What little could be saved from the wreck made a scanty subsistence for his mother and sisters; he must support himself. For more than two years he had been filling a subordinate position in a large manufacturing business. His friends considered him in luck to secure such a place; and he was fain to agree with them, but the acknowledgment did not make him exactly happy in it, notwithstanding.
Discipline can hardly be agreeable. Bob Curtis had been a little spoiled by prosperity; and though he did his work fairly well, there was always a bitterness at heart, and a certain tinge of false shame at having it to do at all. He worked because he must, he told himself, not because he liked or ever should like it. All the family traditions were opposed to work. Then he had the natural confidence of a very young man in his own powers, and it was not pleasant to be made to feel at every turn that he was raw, inexperienced, not particularly valuable to anybody, and that no one especially looked up to or admired him. He scorned himself for minding such things; but all the same he did mind them, and the frank, kindly young fellow was in danger of becoming soured and cynical in his lonely and uncongenial surroundings.
It was just at this point that good fortune brought him into contact with Georgie Talcott, and it was like the lifting of a veil from before his eyes. He recollected her such a pretty, care-free creature, petted and adored by her mother, every day filled with pleasant things, not a worry or cloud allowed to shadow the bright succession of her amusements; and here she sat telling him of a fight with necessity compared with which his seemed like child's play, and out of which she had come victorious. He was struck, too, with the total absence of embarrassment and false shame in the telling. Work, in Georgie's mind, was evidently a thing to be proud of and thankful over, not something to be practised shyly, and alluded to with bated breath. The contrast between his and her way of looking at the thing struck him sharply.