"This is about some one else?" asked Douglas casually.
Mickey leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his head bent with intense thinking.
"Much as you are doing for me," he muttered, "if you really care, if it makes a difference to you—of course I can trust you, if you don't think as I do!"
"You surely can!" cried Douglas Bruce. "Now Mickey, both of us are too shaken to care for the country; take me home with you and let's have supper together and become acquainted. We can't know each other on my ground alone. I must meet you on yours, and prove that I'm really your friend. Let's go where you live and have supper."
"Go where I live? You?" cried Mickey.
"Yes! You come from where you live fresh and clean each day, so can I.
Take me home with you. I want to go dreadfully, Mickey. Please?"
"Well, I ain't such a cad I'm afraid for you to see how I live," he said. "Though you wouldn't want to come more than once; that ain't what I was thinking about."
"Think all you like, Mickey," said Douglas. "Henry, drive to the end of the car line where you've gone before."
On the way he stopped at a grocery, then a café, and at each place piles of tempting packages were placed in the car. Mickey's brain was working fast. One big fact was beginning to lift above all the others. His treasure was slipping from him, and for her safety it had to be so. If he had been struck on the head, forced to undergo an operation, and had lain insensible for hours—Mickey could go no further with that thought. He had to stop and proceed with the other part of his problem. Of course she was better off with him than where she had been; no sane person could dispute that; she was happy and looking improved each day but—could she be made happier and cared for still better by some one else, and cured without the long wait for him to earn the money? If she could, what would be the right name for him, if he kept her on what he could do? So they came at last as near as the car could go to Mickey's home in Sunrise Alley. At the foot of the last flight Mickey paused, package laden.
"Now I'll have to ask you to wait a minute," he said.