"Honest to God, no," said Mr. Fleming fervently. "It's just this. You see my little girl is here to spend her vacation with me--jumped across three states and got here day before yesterday, and under the circumstances it's kind of rough on her for me to go skating off this way leaving her all alone in a barracks of a hotel and in this place where she don't know a soul. Sure's I'm sitting here, Cress, I did my best not to listen to the boys," Fleming spoke earnestly. He always had the virtue of believing profoundly in himself. "It didn't seem fair to her, you know. But, oh Lord! What's the use? You know how it is when a new property swims into my ken. I get the fever so's I can't eat and I can't sleep, and it's 'my heart in the Highlands' so's I'm like to die unless I'm up and away to that little old new mine that's just been found, seeing what's to her, anyway. And you may believe it or not," in solemn asseveration, "but all the time I'm holding back and trying not to go. I've got the cramp in my feet so that I can't hobble, but the moment I yield, and take to the path again, it's gone. That's a fact. Now," the musical note of persuasion was strong in Mr. Fleming's voice, "now all I'm asking of you, Cress, is to look in on my little girl now and then and see that she has everything she wants. She's got a sort of vinegar-faced Sue with her that she calls her maid, so she's not entirely alone; but I want to be easy in my mind about her, to know that she's got some one to fall back on if anything unpleasant comes up. "She's pretty cute, you know. About on to everything that's going. Can take the best kind of care of herself. Has had to, poor kid. Her mother died, and you know, Cress, she might just as well have had a grasshopper for a father as me. Although I've tried, she'd tell you herself, I've tried, that is, as far as the limitations of my artistic temperament would permit. But when I feel the _wanderlust_ and the _weltschmerz_ and all that in my blood and hear the siren voices of new properties calling, why, the fireside fetters have got to fall, the white, clinging arms have got to unloosen their grip. That's all there is to it. You know in books how the father of a motherless daughter is always father and mother and brothers and sisters and grandmother, uncles and aunts to her? Well, I haven't been all those to Fuschia. I wouldn't have known how and she wouldn't have stood for it. She's got no particular use for fireside fetters, herself. Oh," optimistically, "I guess she'll be all right here. I'm leaving her all the money she can spend. But I just want you to keep an eye on her. Kind of see that the wheels are running all right and that she's amused and don't mope. You'll like her, you know. It's a funny thing, but everybody's just crazy and always has been about that kid."