in the
outer office, and a nervous looking secretary jumped for the private
office as suddenly as if the buzzer had stung him.

"Why isn't that car here?" snapped the great man.

"I--I don't understand it, sir. It should have been here half an hour
ago. Jennings is always so punctual," stammered the clerk.

"Humph! Call up the house and see if they've gone back for any reason.
Bonnie told me she'd call for me with the car at five o'clock."

The clerk hurried to the telephone, while Bruce paced his office. "If
that chauffeur has let anything happen to Bonnie, I'll--"

If Bruce had not cared more for his little golden-haired daughter than
for anything else in the world, he never would have thought such a
thing, much less said it; for he had had Jennings for years, and knew
him for the safest, steadiest of drivers. But he scowled when the clerk
hurried back to report that Jennings, with Bonnie in the biggest
automobile, had left for the office almost an hour before.

Throwing his light coat over his arm, the big mill owner slammed down
his rolltop desk and dashed out to the sidewalk, straining his eyes for
a glimpse of the big automobile and Bonnie's flying curls. As he stood
waiting on the curb, fuming at the delay, suddenly he heard a voice that
sent his heart up into his throat.

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy, here we are!" The big automobile swept swiftly up to
him--from the opposite direction!

"My Bonnie!" The big man snatched the dimpled, smiling girl into his
strong arms and held her there.

In the excitement of the moment, Jennings interrupted his employer as
the mill owner started to question him sternly as to the cause of the
delay. Bonnie, too, broke in with her version of the story, and together
they told him how a punctured tire had held them up fifteen minutes just
as they were leaving the house in plenty of time.

They told him how, to avoid being late at the office, Jennings had taken
the old short cut across to the mills, by the way of Red Bridge, only to
be halted by a lad of fourteen who waved a red handkerchief at them and
barred the way across the bridge in spite of the chauffeur's argument
and threats.

They told him how a heavy lumber wagon, in which three farm hands were
rattling home from the city, had come bouncing along to the other side
of the river and how the men had howled down the boy's wild warnings and
entreaties as they bowled on to Red Bridge as fast as their horses could
go.

Bruce