Mike had therefore many advantages over those merely pretty fellows whose rivalry he had once been modest enough to fear. He was a master of all the child's play of love; and to attempt to describe the fancies which he found to vary the game of love, would be to run the risk of exposing the limitations of the literary medium. No words can pull those whimsical faces, or put on those heart-breaking pathetic expressions, with which he loved to meet Esther after some short absence. Sometimes he would come into the room, a little forlorn sparrow of a creature, signifying, by a dejection in which his very clothes took part, that he was out in the east wind of circumstance and no one in the world cared a shabby feather for him. He would stand shivering in a corner, and look timorously from side to side, till at last he would pretend she had warmed him with her kisses, and generally made him welcome to the world. Sometimes he would come in with his collar dismally turned up, and an old battered hat upon his head, and pretend that he hadn't had a meal--of kisses--for a whole week; and occasionally he would come blowing out his cheeks like a king's trumpeter, to announce that Mike Laflin might be at any moment expected. But for the most part these impersonations were in a minor key, as Mike had soon discovered that the more pathetic he was, the more he was hugged and called a "weenty," which was one of his own sad little names for himself. One of his "long-run" fairy-tales, as he would call them, was that each morning as he went to business, he really started out in search of a million pounds, which was somewhere awaiting him, and which he might break his shins over at any moment. It might be here, it might be there, it might come at any hour of the day. The next post might bring it. It might be in yonder Parcel Delivery van,--nothing more probable. Or at any moment it might fall from heaven in a parachute, or be at that second passing through the dock-gates, wearily home from the Islands of Sugar and Spice. You never could tell. "Well, Mike," said Esther, one evening, as he came in, hopping in a pitifully wounded way, and explaining that he had been one of the three ravens sitting on a bough which the cruel huntsman had shot through the wing, etc., "have you found your million pounds to-day?" "No, not my million pounds," said Mike. "I'm told I shall find them to-morrow." "Who told you?" "The Weenty." "You silly old thing! Give me a kiss. Are you a dear? Tell me, aren't you a dear?" "No-p! I'm only a poor little houseless, roofless, windowless, chimney-less, Esther-less, brainless, out-in-the-wind-and-the-snow-and-the-rain, Mike!" "You're the biggest dear in the world!" "No, I'm not. I'm the littlest!" "Suppose you found your million pounds, Mike?" "Suppose! Didn't I tell you I'm sure of it to-morrow?" "Well, when you find it to-morrow, what will you do with it?" "I'll buy the moon." "The moon?" "Yes; as a present for Henry."