Mickey saw plainly what must be done. He gazed at her and suddenly, for the first time, a wave of something new and undefined rushed through him. This exquisitely delicate and beautiful little Highness, sitting so proudly straight, and so uncompromisingly demanding that he redeem his promises, made a double appeal to Mickey. Her Highness scared him until he was cold inside. He was afraid, and he knew it. He wanted to run, and he knew it; yet no band of steel could have held him as this bit of white femininity, beginning to glow a soft pink from slowly enriching blood, now held and forever would hold him, and best of all he knew that. It was in his heart to be a gentleman; there was nothing left save to be one now. He took both Peaches' hands, and began preparing her gently as was in his power for what had to come.
"Yes, Flowersy-girl," he said, "I'll read it to you, but you won't understand 'til I tell you——"
"I always understand," she said sweepingly.
"You know how wild like I came home last night," explained Mickey. "Well, I had reason. Some folks who have been good to us, and that I love like we love Peter and Ma, had been in awful danger of something that would make them sore all their lives, and maybe I had some little part in putting it over, so it never touched them; anyway, they thought so, and I was tickled past all sense and reason about it. It was up to the editor of the Herald to decide; and what he did, was what I begged him to. Course left to himself, he would a-done it anyway, after he had time to think——"
"Mickey, read my po'try piece about me, an' then talk," urged Peaches.
"Honey, you make me so sick I can't tell you."
"Mickey, what's the matter?"
Peaches' penetrating eyes were slowly changing to accusing. She drew a deep breath, giving him his first cold, unrelenting look.
"Mister Michael O'Halloran," she said in incisive tones, "did you write a po'try piece for the first page of the Herald, not about me?"
"Well Miss Chicken," he cried, "I wish you wouldn't talk so much! I wish you'd let me tell you."