“Get hungry?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

Mr. Randolph eyed him questioningly.

“The young man thought I’d waited long enough,” was the gentle explanation.

“So he told you to go!”

“I guess he got tired of seeing me there,” smiled Doodles.

“Did you wait long?”

“’Most two hours.”

“Tall, light-haired fellow, was it?”

The boy assented.

The president mused a moment and then resumed:—­

“In any case your friend will have to make an application.  I think I will let her take a blank.  Have her fill it out, and you can send it down to me.  I will attend to the rest.”

Doodles rose from his chair, feeling that it was time to go, yet he could not forbear one question.

“Do you think she can come to the Home?” His tone betrayed his solicitude.

“I will do the best I can for her, Master Stickney.”  Mr. Randolph had also risen, and he smiled down into the upturned face.  “It will have to be referred to the Committee on Applications, but I will see that it is put through as quickly as possible.”

Doodles decided to see Miss Lily before going home, so it was still early afternoon when he entered the little house on North Charles Street.

“Why, you dear boy!” The little lady had him in her arms.  “How good of you to come!  I was thinking this morning, what if I shouldn’t ever hear you sing again—­and now here you are!”

“I told you I’d come,” laughed Doodles.

“Yes,” smiled Miss Lily; “but people forget.  I guess you aren’t the forgetting kind.”

“I didn’t come to-day to sing,” the boy began slowly.  Now that the moment was at hand he felt suddenly shy at disclosing his errand.  “I happened to think yesterday of the June Holiday Home down in Fair Harbor, and I wondered if you wouldn’t rather go there and live than to go—­anywhere else.”

For an instant Miss Lily stared.  “That beautiful place up on Edgewood Hill?—­me?—­go there?” Her mobile face showed a strange mingling of astonishment, fear, and joy.

“Certainly!  Shouldn’t you like to?”

“‘Like to’!  All the rest of my life?—­Oh, I can’t believe it!”

“I don’t know that you can get in,” Doodles hastened to explain; “but I went to Fair Harbor this morning to see Mr. Randolph—­he’s the president of the Home.  He doesn’t know yet for certain, but he has sent you a blank to make out, and then it’s got to go to a committee.  He said he’d do the best he could for you,—­he is a very nice man!”

“And you have taken all this trouble for me?” Miss Lily’s hands went up to her face.  The tears trickled down and fell on her dress.

“It wasn’t any trouble,” asserted Doodles.  “I thought maybe there was no chance, and so I wouldn’t tell you till I found out.”  The lad took the paper from his pocket.

Miss Lily wiped her eyes.  “I can’t see to write,” she said tremulously; “that is, not well, and the doctor said I mustn’t try.”  She looked mournfully at the boy.