All at once the boy was smiling, and the smile lit up his small, dark face as a candle, slowly flickering, brings cheer and brightness to a dull, lonely room.

“I love Lily,” he told her.  “I wouldn’t let nobody touch Lily!  If Pa so much as spoke mean to her—­I’d kill him.  I’d kill him with a knife!”

Rose-Marie shuddered inwardly at the thought.  But her voice was very even as she spoke.

“Who is Lily?” she asked.

The boy had slid down along the bench.  He was so close to her that his shabby coat sleeve touched her blue one.

“Lily’s my kid sister,” he said, and, miracle of miracles, his voice held a note of tenderness.  “Say—­Miss, I’m sorry I hurt th’ cat.”

With a sudden feeling of warmth Rose-Marie moved just a fraction of an inch closer to the boy.  She knew, somehow, that his small, curiously abject apology was in a way related to the “kid sister”; she knew, almost instinctively, that this Lily who could make a smile come to the dark little face, who could make a tenderness dwell in those hard young eyes, was the only avenue by which she could reach this strange child.  She spoke to him suddenly, impulsively.

“I’d like to see your Lily; I’d like to see her, awfully,” she told him.  “Will you bring her some time to call on me?  I live at the Settlement House.”

A subtle change had come over the child’s face.  He slid, hurriedly, from the bench.

“Oh,” he said, “yer one o’ them!  You sing hymns ‘n’ pray ‘n’ tell folks t’ take baths.  I know.  Well, I can’t bring Lily t’ see you—­not ever!”

Rose-Marie had also risen to her feet.

“Then,” she said eagerly, “let me come and see Lily.  Where do you live?”

The boy’s eyes had fallen.  It was plain that he did not want to answer—­that he was experiencing the almost inarticulate embarrassment of childhood.

“We live,” he told her at last, “in that house over there.”  His pointing finger indicated the largest and grimiest of the tenements that loomed, dark and high, above the squalor of a side street.  “But you wouldn’t wanter come—­there!”

Rose-Marie caught her breath sharply.  She was remembering how the Superintendent had forbidden her to do visiting, how the Young Doctor had laughed at her desire to be of service.  She knew what they would say if she told them that she was going into a tenement to see a strange child named Lily.  Perhaps that was why her voice had an excited ring as she answered.

“Yes, I would come there!” she told the boy.  “Tell me what floor you live on, and what your name is, and when it would be best for me to come?”

“My name’s Bennie Volsky,” the boy said slowly.  “We’re up five flights, in th’ back.  D’yer really mean that you’ll come—­an’ see Lily?”

Rose-Marie nodded soberly.  How could the child know that her heart was all athrob with the call of a great adventure?

“Yes, I mean it,” she told him.  “When shall I come?”