"Nonsense!" she said softly. "Mary. I've discarded the 'Mayme' long
ago."
"Mary," he repeated in a tone of musing content.
"Buddy."
He caught his breath. "A few thousand of the best guys in the world," he
said, "call a fellow that. And every time they said it, it made my heart
ache with longing to hear it in your voice."
"You're a queer Buddy," returned the girl, not quite steadily. "Did you
bring me home a German helmet for a souvenir?"
He shook his head. "I didn't bring home much of anything, except some
experience and the discovery of the fact that when I had to stand on my
own feet, I wasn't much."
"You got your stripes, didn't you?" suggested the girl.
"That's all I did get," he returned jealously. "I didn't get any medal,
or palms or decorations or crosses of war: I didn't get anything except
an occasional calling down and a few scratches. If I'd had the luck to
get into aviation or some of the fancy branches--" David checked
himself. "There I go," he said in self-disgust. "Beefing again."
It was quite in the old, spoiled-child tone; an echo of indestructible
personality, the Weeping Scion of other days; and it went straight to
Mary's swelling, bewildered, groping heart. She began to laugh and a sob
tangled itself in the laughter, and she choked and said:
"Buddy."
He turned toward her.
"Don't be dumb, Buddy," she said, in the words of their unforgotten
first talk. "You've--you've got me--if you still want me."
She put out a tremulous hand to him, and it slipped over his shoulder
and around his neck, and she was drawn close into his arms.
"The Little Red Doctor," remarked David after an interlude, in the
shaken tone of one who has had undeserved miracles thrust upon him,
"said that to want something more than anything in the world and not get
it was good for my soul, besides serving me right."
"The Little Red Doctor," retorted Mary McCartney, with the reckless
ingratitude of a woman in love, "is a dear little red idiot. What does
he know about _Us!_"