"The likes of me," she said, fighting back her tears, "forgettin' you like this. Ye'll forgive me, Mr. Dick?" Dick begged her not to mind him, to let him wait on himself--she wouldn't hear of it, but went through the round. Never for an instant, Dick knew, did she have a thought of holding him responsible. Never for a moment did she think of neglecting him. Only once more did she completely break down. It was when, in reply to her sudden question, "When will I be gettin' my body, Mr. Dick!" he had been forced to tell her that even that poor comfort was denied. Then again the apron went over her head, and again that pitiful wail, "O Mikey boy! O Mikey boy! What's the use of it all? What's the use of it all?" Sabinsport took Mikey's death to heart. The boy had long been a town character. From the time he had first appeared--freckled, red-headed, round as a tub--on the seats of the Primary Department, his elders had been forced to take account of him. The well of vitality in him bubbled from morning until night. His pranks followed one another in a stream no punishment could more than momentarily check. For originality and unexpectedness, no mischief known to Sabinsport's School Board and school teachers had ever touched Mikey's. It had a mirth-provoking quality, too, which made it hard to be dealt with adequately. He did "the last thing you'd think of"--the kind of thing which was passed from mouth to mouth and set the men, particularly, to grinning. The women took it more seriously--they had to deal with him. Katie "licked" him, as she called it, faithfully and hard; and Mikey took it manfully as part of the order of things. He had his philosophy: "If you don't have no fun you don't git licked." He preferred fun, and hardened his soul to punishment. He had grown up decent as could be expected, and so merry that everybody loved him. He was in the way of becoming a crack in the wire mill when the _Lusitania_ outrage came, and he ran to join the avengers as quickly as from childhood he had always jumped into any fight in alley or street, in school or shipyard, when his queer sense of justice was aroused. He was always a "grand fighter," Katie often said, when townspeople congratulated her on the part he had taken with the Canadians. There was no doubt but that Sabinsport followed more carefully the famous fights of the English because Mikey Flaherty was with them. The Boys' Club, the War Board, the _Argus_, Katie's friends, Patsy at the High School and in the Women's Clubs--all watched for the reports of what the Canadians were doing--talked them over, and wondered first if Mikey, and later if the Lieutenant, was there. It was the idea that somebody they had always known was living in the trenches that gave an interest and a reality to mud and rats and cooties, which grew with what they heard. Mikey's letters were read and re-read and printed in the _Argus_ "by request."