It was the first time Dr. Joe had ever been alone with a child. Of
course he had visited innumerable sick children, and had been very
popular with them, but he was ashamed now to remember the sort of things
he had said to other children of Frankie’s age.
“Talked about bunnies and pussy cats!” he thought. “Must have made a
regular idiot of myself. This child’s exceptional, though.”
That comforted him. He was convinced by this time that there was not and
never had been another child like Frankie. He couldn’t have explained
this, and he wouldn’t have tried.
He firmly believed that he was a notable judge of human nature. He often
said that he could read a character at a glance; but, as a matter of
fact, what he really felt was usually a sudden and vehement prejudice,
and it was a prejudice he felt now, in favor of Frankie. He had talked
to him--“drawn him out,” as Katie had suggested, and he found the child
not only intelligent, but an independent, clear-sighted, honest, sturdy
little spirit.
“We’ll go home now,” said Dr. Joe. “We’ll step on the gas, too. It’s
going to rain.”
He looked up at the sky. The brightness of the autumn day had vanished
long ago, and the clouds were driving up fast before a steady, bleak
wind. He tucked the rug carefully about Frankie. A very little fellow he
was, after all, for all his cleverness--a queer little fellow.
“Mustn’t let him get chilled,” he thought.
With that in view, he drove at breakneck speed along the roads that lay
white before him in the stormy dusk, past houses where warm little
lights were beginning to gleam in the windows. It was the hour of
home-coming--and it suddenly occurred to Dr. Joe that he and Frankie
hadn’t much to go home to. Frankie had only a nurse waiting for him, and
the doctor had only Mrs. MacAdams.
“Nonsense!” said Dr. Joe to himself.
The storm couldn’t be dismissed as nonsense, however. Before they were
halfway home it came upon them, a fierce downpour, drumming on the
leather top of the car, dashing against the wind shield, crushing down
into the mud the last valiant green things by the wayside. The
headlights shone mistily into a world all darkness and confusion.
It was no new thing to Dr. Joe. It was simply a storm, and he was
accustomed to being out in all weathers; but Frankie was of an age when
one is, unfortunately, only too carefully protected from the elements,
and he was thrilled. He wriggled joyously under the rug.
“The grand time I’m havin’!” he said.
Dr. Joe smiled to himself at the touch of brogue--picked up from the
boy’s nurse, no doubt; but he had to keep his mind on his driving.
There were many turns in the road, and the mud was slippery. He was glad
when at last he turned into his own driveway. He hustled Frankie out of
the car and up the steps, burst open the front door, and entered his own
hall.
And there was a girl.
Now, if Dr. Joe had been the sort of man to be overcome by the sight of
a pretty face, he would never have been a bachelor at thirty-three; but
he wasn’t that sort of man, and it was not the prettiness of this girl
that made so great an impression upon him. It was the look on her face.
He had never seen quite that look on a woman’s face before, that magical
and beautiful look of welcome. She came hurrying down the hall, and her
step was eager, her eyes were shining. She was smiling and holding out
her hands; and Dr. Joe felt that he had, for the first time since he
could remember, really come home. He didn’t know or care who she was, or
how she had got there, but only that she seemed somehow familiar and
dear, and he was happy because he found her here.
He would have taken her outstretched hands--but the boy was ahead of
him. Frankie ran up to the girl.
“Hello, Molly!” he said casually.
Dr. Joe saw then that the smile and the welcome and all the magic had
been for Frankie, not for him. The girl turned to him, and she was a
different girl--a polite, composed young creature.
“I’ve come to take Frankie home,” she said. “Thank you very much,
doctor.”
For a moment he was too disappointed, too dejected, to answer. He was
only a doctor; people were glad to see him only because they thought he
could make them well. Nobody had ever looked at him as Molly looked at
Frankie, and nobody ever would. What was there waiting for _him_ when he
got home? A lot of patients who wouldn’t give him time to eat his meals,
and Mrs. MacAdams. His house was dark and dusty and cheerless, and the
aroma of that stew still lingered in the air.
“Don’t mention it!” he said gloomily.
She waited a moment, holding Frankie by the hand. If he had looked at
her, he would have recognized her expression, for it was the expression
worn by mothers, aunts, and all female relatives of young children, and
it meant that she was waiting to hear what a unique and wonderful child
Frankie was; but Dr. Joe was lost in his unusually dismal thoughts. He
was roused from them only by the sound of her voice.
“Well, thank you again!” she said. “Come, Frankie! We’ll have to hurry.”
Then he remembered what the weather was.
“No!” he said. “You can’t go out in this storm. No--I’ll take you home
in my car.”
Perhaps, on Frankie’s account, the girl would have accepted this offer,
but just at this moment the dining room door opened and Mrs. MacAdams
appeared.
“Your dinner is on the table, doctor,” she said, in a severe and deeply
wounded tone.
“In a minute,” said Dr. Joe. “I’m going out first.”
“Oh, no!” cried the girl. “No, please! No, we really won’t let you!
We’ll sit here till the rain lets up. I have an umbrella. Please,
doctor, don’t keep your dinner waiting!”
“I don’t care about my dinner,” said Dr. Joe.
Mrs. MacAdams coughed.
“Doctor,” said the girl, “if you let your dinner get cold, after you’ve
been so good to Frankie, I’ll never forgive myself!”
He couldn’t help smiling at her tremendous earnestness, yet it pleased
him. He looked down at her and she looked up at him, and he was still
more pleased. Hers was the sort of prettiness that he liked best of
all--not the fragile, exquisite, rather alarming kind, but the simple,
honest, gentle sort--the home sort.
She was little and slender, but she looked strong. She had blue eyes,
and they were beautifully kind; she had black hair that curled, and a
mouth that was generous and firm. What is more, Dr. Joe remembered the
look she had given Frankie when he came in. He knew what she was capable
of; he thought she was a wonderful girl.
“See here!” he said. “Stay and have a bite with me--you and Frankie--and
I’ll take you home afterward.”
Mrs. MacAdams coughed again. Goodness knows what meaning she intended to
convey, what warnings and reproaches, but certainly the effect was very
different from what she had wished. That cough awoke in Dr. Joe a firm
determination to ask whom he pleased, when he pleased, to his own board.
It also caused the girl to make a curious remark.
“Dr. Joe,” she said, “Frankie’s nurse, that you saw this
afternoon--she’s my grandmother.”
Now no one had ever heard Dr. Joe mention the word “democracy,” and he
never thought about it, either. If you had questioned him, he would have
told you, with considerable vigor, that he did not believe all men to be
equal. He saw human beings at all the crises of their lives, and he
knew that they weren’t equal. He saw people who were heroic in
suffering, and he admired them; he saw people who were not heroic, and
he pitied them, and that was about as far as he went in judging his
fellow creatures. As for dividing people according to their wealth, or
their social standing, or their education, that never entered his head;
so that he hadn’t the faintest notion that he was being tested, or that
the girl was being plucky.
“I see!” he said cheerfully. “Now, then, Mrs. MacAdams! Can you scratch
up something for these two young people to eat?”
Mrs. MacAdams did not like being asked to “scratch up” anything, and she
did not like these young people.
“I shall do my best, doctor,” she promised in a rather chilly tone.
It is regrettable to be obliged to say that she didn’t keep her promise.
Even Mrs. MacAdams could have done better, had she tried.
Dr. Joe didn’t notice this, though. He was filled with delight at his
dinner party. He bustled about, pulling chairs up to the table, and
turning on more lights. His big, hearty voice was plainly audible to the
patients in the waiting room, and they wondered how he could be so
cheerful when they were not.
“Now, then!” he said.
He was sitting at the head of the table, and Miss Ryan--that was her
name--was at the foot, with Frankie between them, and the whole thing
seemed to him extraordiarily jolly. There was something on his plate,
and he was about to eat it, when he observed Miss Ryan lay her hand on
Frankie’s arm and whisper to him.
“I don’t care!” said Frankie, aloud. “I’m hungry!”
Miss Ryan’s face grew scarlet, and Dr. Joe frowned.
“Come now, my boy!” he said. “This won’t do!”
“I’m hungry!” said Frankie, with something like a sob. “Bread an’ butter
isn’t enough!”
“But hasn’t he got--what _has_ he got, anyhow?” inquired Dr. Joe,
puzzled.
“I don’t know,” said Miss Ryan; “but--I’d rather he didn’t eat it.”
She was terribly distressed, but she was resolute.
“It is cold sliced pot roast,” said Mrs. MacAdams, in an awful voice.
A painful silence ensued.
“I’m hungry, Molly!” cried Frankie at last, in a most mutinous voice. “I
don’t care what it is! I’m--”
“Frankie!” said she. “You shan’t eat it, and that’s all there is to it.”
She took away the child’s plate. “I’m sorry,” she explained to Dr. Joe,
in an unsteady voice, “but we have to be very careful about what he
eats; and all that fat--”
“See here, Mrs. MacAdams!” said Dr. Joe entreatingly. “Can’t you rake up
something for the child--milk--oatmeal--something of the sort?”
“Doctor,” said Mrs. MacAdams, “I can neither rake up nor scratch up
anything else. This is the dinner I had prepared--for you. I was not
informed that there would be”--she paused--“a party of guests.”
Then Dr. Joe had a bright idea--the sort of idea that would never have
occurred to any one else.
“Tell you what!” he said. “Poor kid’s hungry. You know what suits him.
Perhaps you could find something if you looked around in the kitchen,
Miss Ryan, eh?”
He didn’t realize what he had done, but Miss Ryan did. She looked at
Mrs. MacAdams with the nicest, most friendly sort of smile, but she got
from that lady a look that roused all her native spirit.
“All right!” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Joe--I will!”
And she rose and went into the kitchen. Mrs. MacAdams did not follow,
nor did she make an offer to help Miss Ryan. Perhaps she felt that this
girl was one who did not require much help; perhaps she had other
reasons. Anyhow, she stood there in the dining room, perfectly silent.
Frankie was silent, too, and very sulky. Dr. Joe was silent, and no
longer happy. His dinner party was not successful.
He wondered. He wondered why he had so many dishes made from roasts, and
so seldom the roasts themselves. He wondered why the tablecloth was
neither dirtier nor cleaner. If it was never changed, it would certainly
have been worse than it was. It must, therefore, be clean sometimes; but
he couldn’t remember having ever seen it so.