Mike scowled darkly. "You ain't got no cause to be sorry for the gal. Who told you she was treated mean? Nobody don't hurt her. But you can't see her. She is sick."
"Why, your wife told us she had gone away!" exclaimed Phil impetuously.
She could have cried with regret the next moment, for she realized how foolish she had been.
"So she has gone away," Mike muttered, "and she is sick. I ain't no liar and my wife ain't neither."
"When will she come back, Captain Mike?" asked Madge in a friendly tone, hoping the title of "captain" would soften the surly sailor.
"She's not comin' back," the man replied impatiently. "I've got to go to my dinner, and I ain't goin' to answer no more questions. Don't you come foolin' around this way any more; my old woman don't like it. I warn you for your good."
Phil was tired of deceit. She knew Mike had not told them the truth. "Captain Mike," she demanded coolly, "have you put your daughter in an asylum? If you have, I think you have been both inhuman and cruel. Mollie is not crazy. If you will tell us where she is we will look after her, and she need not bother you any more." She raised her dark eyes and gazed defiantly at the angry sailor, who shook his great red fist full in her face.
"You'll take a man's own daughter away from him, will you?" he raged. "What makes you so interested in my gal? And who told you Moll was shut up with a lot of crazies? My Moll is going to be married; she has gone away to git her weddin' clothes."
He laughed tantalizingly into the girls' faces as though well pleased with his own joke.
"Mollie married?" Phil exclaimed in horror. "Why, she——" Then Phil stopped herself and inquired, with an innocent expression of interest, "Whom did you say Mollie was going to marry?"