Delightful as were the Trotters, however, even they did not quite come up to Bobby McGinnis for real comradeship. Bobby lived with his mother and grandmother in the little red farmhouse farther up the hill. It was he who had found Margaret crying in the streets on that first dreadful day long ago when she was lost in New York. For a week she had lived in his attic home, then she had become frightened at his father's drunken rage, one day, and had fled to the streets, never to return. All this Margaret knew, though she had but a faint recollection of it. It made a bond of sympathy between them, nevertheless, and caused them to become fast friends at once. It was to Bobby that she went for advice when the standards of Houghtonsville and the Alley clashed; and it was to Bobby that she went for sympathy when grievous mismanagement of the knives and forks or of the folded square of cloth brought disaster to herself and tears to her mother's eyes. She earnestly desired to--as she expressed it to Bobby--"come up to the scratch and walk straight"; and it was to Bobby that she looked for aid and counsel. "You see, you can tell just what 'tis ails me," she argued earnestly, as the two sat in their favorite perch in the apple tree. "You don't know Patty and the Whalens, 'course, but you do know folks just like 'em; and mother--don't you see?--she knows only the kind that lives here, and she--she don't understand. But you know both kinds, and you can tell where 'tis that I ain't like 'em here. And I want to be like 'em, Bobby, I do, truly. They're just bang-up--I mean, _beautiful_ folks," she corrected hastily. "And mother's so good to me! She's just----" Margaret stopped suddenly. A new thought seemed to have come to her. "Bobby," she cried with sharp abruptness, "did you ever know any husbands that was--good?" "'Husbands'? 'Good'? What do ye mean?" "Did you ever know any that was good, I mean that didn't beat their wives and bang 'em 'round? Did you, Bobby?" Bobby laughed. He lifted his chin quizzically, and gazed down from the lofty superiority of his fourteen years. "Sure, an' ain't ye beginnin' sort o' early ter worry about husbands?" he teased. "But, mebbe you've already--er--picked him out! eh?" Margaret did not seem to hear. She was looking straight through a little open space in the boughs of the apple tree to the blue sky far beyond. "Bobby," she began in a voice scarcely above a whisper, "if that man should be bad to my mother I think I'd--kill him." Bobby roused himself. He suddenly remembered Joe Bagley and the kitten. "What man?" he asked. "Dr. Spencer." "Dr. Spencer!" gasped Bobby. "Why, Dr. Spencer wouldn't hurt a fly. He's just bully!" Margaret stirred restlessly. She turned a grave face on her companion. "Bobby," she reproved gently, "I don't think I'd oughter hear them words if I ain't 'lowed to use 'em myself." Bobby uptilted his chin.