Already Glory's heart was happier. She would not allow herself to think it possible that her grandfather was hurt, and Nick's willingness to help was a comfort. Maybe he would even take her with him, though she doubted it. However, she put the question to him as he reappeared with some old scraps in a torn newspaper, but while they were enjoying these as best they could and sharing the food with Bo'sn, Nick unfolded a better plan. "Ye see, Take-a-Stitch, it's this way--no use wastin' eight cents on a old ferry when four'll do. You look all over Broadway again. Then, if he ain't anywheres 'round there, go straight to them other crony captains o' hisn an' see. Bein's he can't tell difference 'twixt night an' day, how'd he know when to come back to the Lane, anyway?" "He always come 'fore," answered Glory, sorrowfully. It was a new thing for Nick to take the lead in anything which concerned the little girl, who was the recognized leader of all the Lane children, and it made him both proud and more generous. Yielding to a wild impulse that now seized him, with a gesture of patronage, he drew from his pocket Miss Bonnicastle's quarter and dropped it in Glory's lap. She stared at it, then almost gasped the question, "What--what's it for, Nick Dodd?" "Fer--you!" cried the boy. He might have added that it was "conscience money," and that the unpleasant burning in his pocket had entirely ceased the instant he had rid himself of the ill-gotten coin, because at the time he had guided Miss Laura to the littlest house he had not tarried to learn how fruitless her visit was; else he might have felt less like a traitor. As it was, he tossed his head and answered loftily, "Don't do fer girls to go trav'lin' round 'ithout cash. You ain't workin' to-day an'--an' ye may need it. Newspaper men--well, we can scrape along 'most anyhow. Hello, here's Buttons!" A cheery whistle announced the arrival of the third member of this intimate trio, and presently Billy came in sight around the Elbow, his freckled face as gay as the morning despite the facts that he still carried some unsold papers under his arm and that he had just emerged from a street fight, rather the worse for that event. Glory's fastidiousness was shocked, and, forgetting her own trouble in disgust at his carelessness, she exclaimed, "You bad Billy Buttons! There you've gone lost two more your buttons what I sewed with my strongest thread this very last day ever was! An' your jacket----What you been doin' with yourself, Billy Buttons?"