Mickey laughed outright. Then he sobered suddenly and spoke gravely, directly to Miss Winton.
"Thank you for thinking of it, and planning for her," he said. "I was afraid you would."
"Thank me for something you feared I would do! Mickey, aren't you getting things mixed?"
"Thank you for thinking of Lily and wanting to help her," explained Mickey, "but she doesn't need you. She's mine and I'm going to keep her; so what I can do for her will have to be enough, until I can do better."
"I see," said Leslie. "But suppose that she should have attention at once, that you can't give her, and I can?"
"Then I'd be forced to let you, even if it took her from me," agreed Mickey. "But thank the Lord, things ain't that way. I didn't take my say-so for it; I went to the head nurse of the Star of Hope; she's gone to the new Elizabeth Home now; she loves to nurse children best. All the time from the first day she's told me how, and showed me, so Lily has been taken care of right, you needn't worry about that. And where she is now, if she was a queen-lady she couldn't have grander; honest she couldn't!"
"But Mickey, how are you going to pay for all that?" queried Douglas.
"Easy as falling off a car in a narrow skirt," said Mickey. "'Member that big house where things are Heaven-white, and a yard full of trees, and the fence corners are cut with the shears, and the street—I mean the road—swept with a broom, this side the golf grounds about two miles?"
"Yes," said Douglas. "The woman there halted my car one evening and spoke to me about you."
"Oh she did?" exclaimed Mickey. "Well I hope you gave me a good send-off, 'cause she's a lady I'm most particular about. You see I stopped there for a drink, the day you figured instead of playing, and she told me about a boy who was to be sent out by the Herald and hadn't come, and as she was ready, and interested, she was disappointed. So I just said to her if the boy didn't come, how'd she like to have a nice, good little girl that wouldn't ever be the least bother. Next day she came to see us, and away Lily went sailing to the country in a big automobile, and she isn't coming back 'til my rooms are cool, if she can be spared then."