Hepworth mechanically stretched his hand out toward his check book.
"Oh, it's not money I want this time," said Fleming easily. "It's no favor to me to lend me money. That's always spent on others. Anyway, I've got more than I can handle for once. You see, it's this way. I've got to go over to Idaho. I've just got wind of a big thing there, a big thing. Two boys I know want me to go over and look at it and I'm off to-day. Biggest thing that's been struck in years, they tell me. Both of them stone broke. Didn't have enough money to pay railway fare. Stole rides, practically no food for a week. If there's anything in it, I may be good enough to allow you to finance it."
"Let me see," said Hepworth reflectively, "according to the invariable law of ratio, I'm about due to win on some of these ventures of yours I've so obligingly financed."
Mr. Fleming solemnly and sadly shook his head. "Set a beggar on horseback and sooner or later he'll show his rags. The born millionaire! You show all the degenerate earmarks." He pointed the finger of scorn at Hepworth. "Even if I hadn't come along you would still have been a millionaire, climbed to it on some one else's shoulders. Entirely forgotten the old days, haven't you? Why who," explosively, "laid the foundation of your soul-deadening fortune? Me. Myself. Well, that's what a man has to expect in this world. But seriously, Cress, I do want you to do something for me."
"Don't frighten me in this way then," said Hepworth. "If it isn't money, I'm getting apprehensive. You're in some scrape and I've got to take off my coat and work like a nigger to get you out."
"Honest to God, no," said Mr. Fleming fervently. "It's just this. You see my little girl is here to spend her vacation with me—jumped across three states and got here day before yesterday, and under the circumstances it's kind of rough on her for me to go skating off this way leaving her all alone in a barracks of a hotel and in this place where she don't know a soul. Sure's I'm sitting here, Cress, I did my best not to listen to the boys," Fleming spoke earnestly. He always had the virtue of believing profoundly in himself. "It didn't seem fair to her, you know. But, oh Lord! What's the use? You know how it is when a new property swims into my ken. I get the fever so's I can't eat and I can't sleep, and it's 'my heart in the Highlands' so's I'm like to die unless I'm up and away to that little old new mine that's just been found, seeing what's to her, anyway. And you may believe it or not," in solemn asseveration, "but all the time I'm holding back and trying not to go. I've got the cramp in my feet so that I can't hobble, but the moment I yield, and take to the path again, it's gone. That's a fact. Now," the musical note of persuasion was strong in Mr. Fleming's voice, "now all I'm asking of you, Cress, is to look in on my little girl now and then and see that she has everything she wants. She's got a sort of vinegar-faced Sue with her that she calls her maid, so she's not entirely alone; but I want to be easy in my mind about her, to know that she's got some one to fall back on if anything unpleasant comes up.
"She's pretty cute, you know. About on to everything that's going. Can take the best kind of care of herself. Has had to, poor kid. Her mother died, and you know, Cress, she might just as well have had a grasshopper for a father as me. Although I've tried, she'd tell you herself, I've tried, that is, as far as the limitations of my artistic temperament would permit. But when I feel the wanderlust and the weltschmerz and all that in my blood and hear the siren voices of new properties calling, why, the fireside fetters have got to fall, the white, clinging arms have got to unloosen their grip. That's all there is to it. You know in books how the father of a motherless daughter is always father and mother and brothers and sisters and grandmother, uncles and aunts to her? Well, I haven't been all those to Fuschia. I wouldn't have known how and she wouldn't have stood for it. She's got no particular use for fireside fetters, herself. Oh," optimistically, "I guess she'll be all right here. I'm leaving her all the money she can spend. But I just want you to keep an eye on her. Kind of see that the wheels are running all right and that she's amused and don't mope. You'll like her, you know. It's a funny thing, but everybody's just crazy and always has been about that kid."
Hepworth was not proof against the appeal in his old friend's eyes, neither was he capable of shattering Fleming's simple faith that he, Hepworth, a jaded and middle-aged person, would find Fleming's daughter a delightful and interesting charge.
Fleming's mind still ran on his child. "She's about the only thing in petticoats that has any real confidence in me," he said, with pride. "It's only been once or twice in my career that I've seen a look of real friendship in a woman's eyes. The first sight of me brings that wary, on-guard gleam way back in their blue or brown windows of the soul. You can't fool a woman. They've got those intuitions, you know, and they know instinctively that I'm a born missionary to the henpecked, that it's my mission in life to bring a little cheer into the lives of those poor shut-ins, the married men; scatter a little sunshine on their path.
"By the way," as if struck by a sudden thought, "you've married since I last saw you. Some slip of a girl, I'll be bound. That's what the middle-aged millionaire's sure to do. Well, hold on to your money, Cress. Don't trust to your own fascinations. And you keep an eye on my little Fuschia, won't you?"