"The devil you say!" exploded Mr. Minturn.
"No, I said Chaffner!" insisted Mickey. "Chaffner of the Herald. I'm going to write a poetry piece for his front page, some day soon now. I been selling his paper all my life."
"And so you're a friend of Chaffner's?"
"Oh not bosom and inseparable," explained Mickey. "I haven't seen so awful much of him, but when I do, we get along fine."
"And he said——?" questioned Mr. Minturn.
"Just what I been afraid of all the time," said Mickey. "That these investigations at times got into places you didn't look for, and made awful trouble; and that my boss might get it with his."
"Mickey, you will promise me something?" asked Mr. Minturn. "You see I started Mr. Bruce on this trying to help him to a case that would bring him into prominence, so if it should go wrong, it's in a way through me. If you think Douglas is unlike himself, or worried, will you tell me? Will you?"
"Why surest thing you know!" cried Mickey. "Why I should say I would! Gee, you're great too! I think I'll like you awful well when we get acquainted."
Mickey was busy when Bruce entered, and with him was Leslie Winton. They brought the breath of spring mellowing into summer, freighted with emanations of real love, touched and tinctured with joy so habitual it had become spontaneous on the part of Leslie Winton, and this morning contagious with Douglas Bruce. Mickey stood silent, watched them closely, and listened. So in three minutes, from ragged scraps and ejaculations effervescing from what was running over in their brains, he knew that they had taken an early morning plunge into Atwater, landed a black bass, had a breakfast of their own making, at least in so far as gathering wild red raspberries from the sand pit near the bridge; and then they had raced to the Multiopolis station to start Mr. Winton on a trip west to try to sell his interest in some large land holdings there, the care of which he was finding burdensome.
"Heavens, how I hope Daddy makes that sale!" cried Leslie. "I've been so worried about him this summer."