"What are you doing up so late?" Hertha demanded, but Bob did not hear her. "Miss Ogilvie," he said, all excitement, "the cook told me that Tom is here." "Yes," Hertha answered, and then with a gesture of introduction, dropping into the phraseology of home said, "Bob, meet Tom." The little boy showed a moment's surprise, then accepting the race of his hero, Tom-of-the-Woods, as a simple fact, asked eagerly, "Did you bring your top?" Tom, surprised at this greeting, brought out the top again. "Come along," Bob cried, and leading the way they all three went out of the house down the stoop. "You must do awfully well," Hertha whispered as under the street lamp the hero of her story began slowly to wind his string. "What you been giving him?" he asked, nodding to the little boy whose gleaming blue eyes and intense interest in the proceedings augured more than the mere pleasure in seeing a top spin. "I've just been telling him a few things," she answered lightly. She stood on the steps and watched with delight Tom's careful choice of the best spot on the pavement for his spin and smiled to see the two boy-faces, one so pink and white, the other so brown, each intent on the business in hand. It was a queer trick. Despite the many times Hertha had seen it, she was never quite sure at what moment the top, spinning at a marvelous pace, was caught up by the spinner to disappear in his pocket. And if she felt the illusion, despite her familiarity with it, there was no question but that Bob in the dim light, looking for the miraculous, found it. He regarded Tom as a magician and only hoped for some new manifestation of his power when he straightened himself up and stood before them. "I must go now," he said. He looked up at Hertha who stood on the step above him. "Tom," she said, trying to delay him, "do you go to church?" "Of course!" "To Siloam?" "How'd you guess that?" "It's the biggest church in town." Tom smiled. "I reckon you know'd I wouldn't go to any but a big one while I was about it." "And when you write home tell them all about me, won't you?" "Yes." "And we won't lose track of one another again." He did not reply to this, but with a smile for her and a nod to Bob, walked with his slow, steady gait down the street. Hertha stood by her doorstep fearing to go farther, but Bob tore after his hero and with short, trotting steps that sometimes became a run, accompanied him to the street car, watching as he was carried away out of his sight. When he came back he found Hertha standing just where he had left her. "Say, Miss Ogilvie," he questioned, "is it staying in the woods so much makes him black?" "Why do you ask!" Hertha said sharply; "don't you like him the way he is?" "Oh, I don't care," Bob replied in a catholic spirit; and added meditatively: "In the Arabian Nights all the genii are black." CHAPTER XXIX