“And she sent the policeman to your house and all,” mused Mickey.  “Gee!”

His face was rather red and he looked at Brother and Sister queerly.  He opened his mouth as though to say something, then apparently changed his mind.

“Well, we have to go home,” declared Brother.  “You’ll go see Miss Putnam, won’t you, Mickey?”

“I suppose so,” muttered Mickey.  “So long!”

“Maybe he doesn’t like it,” said Sister as they went on toward their house.

“Oh, yes he does,” replied Brother confidently.  “He’ll go, you see if he doesn’t.”

Mickey Gaffney did go see Miss Putnam, and something about him made the old lady like him right away.  She engaged him to do errands for her an hour in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and she paid him fifteen cents an hour.  If he weeded in the garden that was to be extra.

“Will you have enough for your shoes?” asked Sister anxiously one morning, when Mickey came to do some weeding in the garden for Jimmie.

“My, yes, and I guess I can buy my little sister a pair,” said Mickey proudly.

“Have you a little sister?” demanded Brother and Sister together.  “How old is she?”

“Five,” answered Mickey, getting down on his hands and knees and going at the weeds in a business-like way.  “She’ll be five next month.”

“Isn’t that nice!” commented Sister.  “I’m five years old, too.”

Mickey avoided her eyes and was apparently too busy to talk much to them, so by and by Brother and Sister ran off and left him to his weeding.

If they had stayed, they might have seen Mickey throw down his weeding-fork suddenly and march out of the garden.

“Don’t believe that boy is going to stick to his work,” said Molly to Mother Morrison.  “He’s gone already.”

But Mickey was hurrying along toward Miss Putnam’s house and did not care very much what anyone thought of him.  He didn’t think kindly of himself at that moment.

“Why, Mickey!” Miss Putnam looked up at him in amazement as he came around to the back porch where she was sweeping a rug.  “What’s the matter, child, don’t you feel well?”

“I feel all right,” he said briefly.  “Say, Miss Putnam, you know that tar that was on your porch?  I threw it!”

“You—­you what?” gasped Miss Putnam.  “You threw that hot tar all over my clean porch and walk?  Why, Mickey!”

“Yes’m,” muttered Mickey miserably.

“But why?” insisted Miss Putnam.  “And Mrs. Graham told me that the Morrison boy and girl did it.”

“Guess she thought she saw ’em—­it was most dark,” said Mickey.  “But it wasn’t Roddy and Betty.  I did it, and Nina, my little sister, helped me.”

“But why?” persisted Miss Putnam.  “I never should have thought it of you, Mickey, never.”

Strange as it may seem, Miss Putnam really liked Mickey.  He was so willing and so cheerful and so quick that the old lady who had had to do all the work of her small home so long that she had forgotten how it felt to have younger hands helping her, began to look forward to Mickey’s coming every day.