The saving of her life meant nothing to little Starr, but she obediently murmured ‘I’ee tank oo!’ as the nurse had drilled her to do before she brought her, and then laid her moist pink lips on cheeks, forehead, eyes and mouth in turn, and Mikky, in ecstasy, lay trembling with the pleasure of it. No one had ever kissed him before. Kissing was not in vogue in the street where he existed.
Thereafter, every day until he was convalescent, Starr came to visit him.
By degrees he grew accustomed to her gay presence enough to talk with her freely as child with child. Her words were few and her tongue as yet quite unacquainted with the language of this world; but perhaps that was all the better, for their conversations were more of the spirit than of the tongue, Mikky’s language, of circumstance, being quite unlike that of Madison Avenue.
Starr brought her wonderful electric toys and dolls, and Mikky looked at them with wonder, yet always with a kind of rare indifference, because the child herself was to him the wonder of all wonders, an angel spirit stooped to earth. And every day, when the nurse carried her small charge away after her frolic with the boy, she would always lift her up to the bed and say:
“Now kiss the wee b’y, Baby Starr, and thank him again fer savin’ yer life.”
And Starr would lay her soft sweet mouth on his as tenderly and gravely as if she understood the full import of her obligation. At such times Mikky would watch her bright face as it came close to his, and when her lips touched his he would close his eyes as if to shut out all things else from this sacred ceremony. After Starr and Morton were gone the nurse was wont to look furtively toward the bed and note the still, lovely face of the boy whose eyes were closed as if to hold the vision and memory the longer. At such times her heart would draw her strangely from her wonted formality and she would touch the boy with a tenderness that was not natural to her.
There were other times when Mr. Endicott would come and talk briefly with the boy, just to see his eyes light and his face glow with that wonderful smile, and to think what it would be if the boy were his own. Always Mikky enjoyed these little talks, and when his visitor was gone he would think with satisfaction that this was just the right kind of a father for his little lovely Starr. He was glad the Baby Starr had a father. He had often wondered what it would be like to have a father, and now he thought he saw what the height of desire in a father might be. Not that he felt a great need for himself in the way of fathers. He had taken care of himself since he could remember and felt quite grown up and fathers usually drank; but a baby like that needed a father, and he liked Starr’s father.
But the dearest thing now in life for him was little Starr’s kisses.
To the father, drawn first by gratitude to the boy who had saved his child’s life, and afterwards by the boy’s own irresistible smile, these frequent visits had become a pleasure. There had been a little boy before Starr came to their home, but he had only lived a few weeks. The memory of that golden, fuzzy head, the little appealing fingers, the great blue eyes of his son still lingered bitterly in the father’s heart. When he first looked upon this waif the fancy seized him that, perhaps his own boy would have been like this had he lived, and a strange and unexpected tenderness entered his heart for Mikky. He kept going to the little invalid’s room night after night, pleasing himself with the thought that the boy was his own.
So strong a hold did this fancy take upon the man’s heart that he actually began to consider the feasibility of adopting the child and bringing him up as his own—this, after he had by the aid of detectives, thoroughly searched out all that was known of him and found that no one owned Mikky nor seemed to care what became of him except Buck and his small following. And all the time the child, well fed, well cared for, happier than he had ever dreamed of being in all his little hard life, rapidly convalesced.