"I just wondered if you wasn't getting to that," commented Mickey.
"Getting to what?" inquired Douglas.
"Going to do me good!" explained Mickey. "The swell stiffs are always going to do us fellows good. Mostly they do! They do us good and brown! They pick us up a while and make lap dogs of us, then when we've lost our appetites for our jobs and got to having a hankerin' for the fetch and carry business away they go and forget us, so we're a lot worse off than we were before. Some of the fellows come out of it knowing more ways to be mean than they ever learned on the street," explained Mickey. "If it's that Big Brother bee you got in your bonnet, pull its stinger and let it die an unnatural death! Nope! None! Good-bye!"
"Mickey, wait!" cried Douglas.
"Me business calls, an' I must go—'way to my ranch in Idaho!" gaily sang Mickey.
"I'd like to shake you!" said Douglas Bruce.
"Well, go on," said Mickey. "I'm here and you're big enough."
"If I thought it would jolt out your fool notions and shake some sense in, I would," said Douglas indignantly.
"Now look here, Kitchener," said Mickey. "Did I say one word that ain't so, and that you don't know is so?"
"What you said is not even half a truth, young man! I do know cases where idle rich men have tried the Little Brother plan as a fad, and made a failure of it. But for a few like that, I know dozens of sincere, educated men who are honestly giving a boy they fancy, a chance. I can take you into the office of one of the most influential men in this city, right across the hall there, and show you a boy he liked who has in a short time become his friend, an invaluable helper, and hourly companion, and out of it that boy will get a fine education, good business training, and a start in life that will give him a better chance to begin on than the man who is helping him had."