Michael O'Halloran Part 81

"Well young man, can you?" inquired a voice behind them.

With the same impulse Douglas and Mickey turned to Mr. Winton and Leslie standing far enough inside the door to have heard all that had been said. A slow red crept over Mickey's fair face. Douglas sprang to his feet, his hand outstretched, words of welcome on his lips. Mr.

Winton put him aside with a gesture.

"I asked this youngster a question," he said, "and I'm deeply interested in the answer. _Can you?_"

Mickey stepped forward, taking one long, straight look into the face of the man before him; then his exultant laugh trilled as the notes of Peter's old bobolink bird on the meadow fence.

"Surest thing you know!" he cried in ringing joy. "You're tired, you need washing, sleep, and a long rest, but there isn't any glisteny, green look on your face. It's been with you, like I told Mr. Chaffner it's in the Bible; only with you, it's been even more than a man 'laying down his life for his friend,' it was a near squeak, but you made it! Gee, you made it! I should say I _could_ tell!"

Mr. Winton caught Mickey, lifting him from his feet. "G.o.d made a jewel after my heart when he made you lad," he said. "If you haven't got a father, I'm a candidate for the place."

"Gee, you're the nicest man!" said Mickey. "If I was out with a telescope searching for a father, I'd make a home run for you; but you see I'm fairly well fixed. Here's my boss, too fine to talk about, that I work for to earn money to keep me and my family; there's Peter, better than gold, who's annexed both me and my child; there's Mr.

Chaffner punching me up every time I see him about my job for him, soon as I finish school; I'd _like_ you for a father, only I'm crazy about Peter. Just you come and see _Peter_, and you'll understand----"

"I'll be there soon," said Mr. Winton. "I have reasons for wanting to know him thoroughly. And by the way, how do you do, Douglas? How is the great investigation coming on? 'Fine!' I'm glad to hear it. Push it with all your might, and finish up so we can have a month on At.w.a.ter without coming back and forth. I feel as if I'd need about that much swimming to make me clean, as the young man here suggests; travelling over the west in midsummer is neither cool nor cleanly; but it's great, when things sell as ours did. Land seems to be moving, and there's money under the surface; n.o.body has lost so much, they are only economizing; we must do that ourselves, but Swain and I are both safe, so we shall enjoy a few years of work to recoup some pretty heavy losses; we're not worth what we were, but we are even, with a home base, the love of G.o.d big in our hearts, and doubly all right, since if we couldn't have righted ourselves, our friends would have saved us, thanks to this little live wire on my left!"

"Oh Daddy, if you'd searched forever, you couldn't have found a better name for Mickey!" cried Leslie. "Come on Douglas let's go home and rest."

"Just as soon as I write and start Mickey with a note," said Douglas.

"Go ahead, I'll be down soon."

He turned to his desk, wrote a few lines, and sealing them, handed the envelope to the waiting boy.

"City Hall," he said. "And Mickey, I see the whole thing. It will take some time to figure just what I do owe you----"

"Aw-a-ah g'wan!" broke in Mickey, backing away.

"Mickey, we'll drive you to take the note, and then you come with us,"

said Douglas.

"Thanks, but it would try my nerve," said Mickey, "and I must help Peter move in the pump!"

CHAPTER XX

_Mickey's Miracle_

That night Mickey's voice, shrill in exuberant rejoicing, preceded him down the highway, so the Hardings, all busy working out their new plans for comfort, understood that something unusually joyous had happened.

Peaches sat straighter in her big pillow-piled chair, leaned forward, and smilingly waited.

"Ain't he happy soundin'?" she said to Mrs. Harding, who sat near her sewing. "I guess he has thought out the best po'try piece yet. Mebby this time it will be good enough for the first page of the _Herald_."

"Young as he is, that's not likely," said the literal woman. "There's no manner of doubt in my mind but that he _can_ do great newspaper work when he finishes his education and makes his start; but I think Mr.

Bruce will use all his influence to turn him toward law."

"Mr. Douglas Bruce is a swell gentl'man," said Peaches, "and me and Mickey just loves him for his niceness to us; but we got _that_ all settled. Mickey is going to write the po'try piece for the first page of the _Herald_--that's our paper--and then we are going to make all my pieces into a bu'ful book, like I got it started here."

Peaches picked up a small notebook, scrupulously kept, and lovingly glanced over the pages, on each of which she had induced Mickey to write in his plainest script one section of her nightly doggerel; and if he failed from the intense affairs of the day, she left a blank page for him to fill later. Taken together, the remainder of her possessions were as nothing to Peaches compared with that book. Not an hour of the day pa.s.sed that it was not in her fingers, every line of it she knew by heart, and she learned more from it than all Mickey's other educational efforts. Peter sc.r.a.ped a piece of fine black walnut furniture free from the acc.u.mulated varnish of years, and ran an approving hand over the smooth dark surface, seasoned with long use. He smiled at her. She smiled back, falling into a little chant that had been on her lips much of the time of late: "You know, Peter! You know, Peter! We know somepin' we won't tell!"

Peter nodded, beaming on her.

"Just listen to that boy, Peter, he must be perfectly possessed!" said Nancy.

"He didn't ever sound so glad before!" cried the child eagerly.

Mickey came up the walk radiant. He divided a smile between Mrs.

Harding and Peter, and bowed low before Peaches as he laid a package at her feet. Then he struck an att.i.tude of exaggerated obeisance and recited:

"_Days like this I'm tickled silly, When I see my August Lily. No other fellow, dude or gawk, Owns a flower that can laugh and talk._"

Peaches immediately laughed; so did all of them.

"Peter," asked Mickey, "were you ever so glad that you thought you would bust wide open?"

"I was," said Peter; "I am this minute."

"Would you mind specifying circ.u.mstances?"

"Not a bit," said Peter. "First time was when Ma said she'd marry me, and I got my betrothal kiss; second, was the day she said she'd forgive my years of selfish dunderheadedness, and start over. Now you, Mickey, what's yours?"

"The great investigation is over, so far as our commission goes,"

answered Mickey. "Multiopolis isn't robbed where she was sure she was.

Her accounts balance in the departments we've gone over. n.o.body gets the slick face, the gla.s.s eye, the lawn mower on his cocoanut, or dons the candy suit from our work; but some folks I love had a near squeak, and I got a month vacation! Think of that, Miss Lily Peaches O'Halloran! Gee, let's get things fixed up here and have a party, to show the neighbouring gentlemen what's coming to them, before the weather gets so cold they won't have time to finish their jobs this fall. Some of them will squirm, but we don't care. Some of them will think they won't do it, but they _will_. Kiss me, Lily! Hug me tight, and let me go dig on the furnace foundation 'til I sweat this out of me."

When the children were sleeping that night he sat on the veranda and told Mrs. Harding and Peter exactly what he thought wise to repeat of the day's experience and no more; so that when he finished, all they knew was that the investigation was over, so far as Mr. Bruce was concerned, Mickey had a vacation, and was a happy boy.

As she came to dinner the next day, Mary laid a bundle of mail beside her father's plate. When he saw it, Peter, as was his custom, reached for the _Herald_ to read the war headlines. He opened the paper, gave it a shake, stared at it in amazement, scanned a few lines and muttered: "Well for the Lord's sake!"

Then he glanced over the sheets at Mickey and back again. The family arose and hurried to a point of vantage at Peter's shoulder, while he spread the paper wide and held it high so that all of them could see.

Enclosed in a small ruled s.p.a.ce they read:

_Sacred to the memory of the biggest scoop, That ever fell in Mister Chaffner's soup, And was pitched by this nicest editor-man, Where it belonged, in the garbage can, To please his friend, Michael O'Halloran.

Whoop fellers, whoop, for the drownded scoop, That departed this life in our Editor's soup!

All together boys, Scoop! Soup! Whoop!_

They rushed at Mickey, shook hands, thumped, patted and praised him, when a wail arose to the point of reaching his consciousness.

"Mickey, what?" cried Peaches.

"Let me take it just a minute, Peter," said Mickey.

"Wait a second," suggested Mrs. Harding, picking up a big roll that they had knocked to the floor. "This doesn't look like catalogues, and it's addressed to you. Likely they've sent you some of your own."

"Now maybe Mr. Chaffner did," said Mickey, almost at the bursting point. "Course he is awful busy, the busiest man in the world, I expect, but he _might_ have sent me a copy of my poetry, since he used it."