"Thank you dearest lady," he said. "I must be getting out where the car won't pass without my seeing it."
"You wait at the gate a minute," she said, "I want to send in a little basket of things to-night. I'll have it ready in a jiffy."
Mickey slowly walked to the gate. When the woman came with a basket covered with a white cloth, he thanked her again; as he took it he rested his head against her arm, smiling up at her with his wide true eyes.
"A thing I can't understand is," he said, "why when the Lord was making mothers, he didn't cut all of them from the same piece he did you. I'll just walk on down the road and smell June beside this clover field. Is it yours?"
"Yes," she said.
"Would you care if I'd take just a few to Lily? I know she never saw any."
"Take a bunch as big as your head if you want them."
"Lily is so little, three will do her just as well; besides, she's got to remember how we are fixed, so she needn't begin to expect things to come her way by baskets and bunches," said Mickey. "She's bound to be spoiled bad enough as it is. I can't see how I'm going to come out with her, but she's mine, and I'm going to keep her."
"Mickey," laughed the woman, "don't you think you swing around to Lily just about the way I do to Peter?"
"Well maybe I do," conceded Mickey.