"Celtic?" queried the girl. Then with one shrewd glance at the Young Doctor's immobile face she burst out laughing. It was not a loud laugh. It was indeed a very little laugh, and most distinctly musical. But in that instant the whole attention of the room seemed to focus itself suddenly on that one helpless little table.

"Is there anything specially peculiar looking about us, I wonder?" bristled the Young Doctor. "Or rather, about me, I should say?" he corrected himself quickly. "Even that—that philanthropic woman," he fumed, "who vacated this table for us! Well, of course I wouldn't say exactly that she was climbing up on the rungs of her chair, but——" 53

"Oh, that's nothing," said the girl with unruffled nonchalance. "She's been staring at us all of the evening. Everybody's been staring at us all of the evening," she added amiably. Very daintily, but none the less expeditiously, as she spoke, she began to turn her attention to the crisp green salad at her plate. "It is because we are both so tall and fine," she confided without an atom of self-consciousness.

"Oh, well, really, speak for yourself!" flushed the Young Doctor.

"For myself?" she repeated a bit speculatively. Once again, in a moment of temporary arrestment, she laid down her knife and fork to scrutinize the Young Doctor's face. "Oh, no," she reassured him almost at once. "You are most tall and fine too! And so brune to my blonde!" she confided as she took up her fork again. "Certainly it is most striking of us," she mused at last more to the lettuce than to the Young Doctor. "But that poor womans over there?" she rallied transiently. "Everywhere one goes it is the same. 'Old—old maid' is it that you call her? So sad! So neglected! So 'romanticks' is it 54that you say? Everybodys she sees she thinks it is young lovers! But personally," said the girl, "I am still very hungry. Let us take what dessert is proffered."

"Oh, of course," acquiesced the Young Doctor. "If I've got to be—if we've got to be—stared at, I mean, it would certainly be quite as comfortable to have something to do."

"Perfectly," smiled the girl. "So as we wait for the ices and the pies let us see what is survived of the toys." And before the Young Doctor could dissuade her she had lifted her awkwardly retied bundle to the level of the table, and was earnestly studying out the relative damages of the green- feathered parrot and the tiny tin railroad train. To confirm apparently what was her own suspicion in the matter she handed the railroad train to the Young Doctor for investigation.

And because the Young Doctor was naturally and sincerely inquisitive about anything that was broken he bent his dark head to the task with a sudden real gasp of relief, and for the next five minutes at least all possible awkwardness between them seemed merged, then 55and there, into the easy give-and-take argument of a thoroughly familiar and accustomed association.

Once again their small table became the cynosure of all eyes. The dark Young Doctor alone was quite sufficiently striking looking. And the girl in her Norse glow and blondness would have been a marked figure anywhere. But together? And now? At this very minute? So anxious, so painstaking, so brooding? If the room had thought them shy "young lovers" a scant half hour before, goodness knows what it thought them now!

The woman in the corner had most certainly reconstructed her original impressions. On the way out from her own unsocial supper she stopped impulsively just behind the Young Doctor's chair to watch his rather surprising manipulation of the fractured toy engine wheel. Her face was by no means unpleasant, but almost exaggeratedly friendly in a plaintive, deprecating sort of way.

From their focus on the Young Doctor's hands her pale eyes lifted suddenly to the girl's glowing face, and she held out a small paper bagful of pink-frosted cakes. 56

"Take those home," she said, "instead of the poor broken toys!"

"Why—why, thank you!" laughed the girl.

"How—how old are your little ones?" asked the woman quite irrelevantly.

"Eh?" jerked the Young Doctor. From his joggled hands the little tin railroad train crashed down into his plate.

With her hands clapped playfully to her ears the girl looked thoughtfully up at her accoster.

"Why, Lisa is four," she said quite simply. "And Jonathan is six, and——"

"Oh, have you got a 'Jonathan'?" kindled the woman. Her sallow face was suddenly quite transfigured with light. "And does he look like you?" she cried. "Or," sweeping the table with another deprecating glance, "or does he take after his father?"

"Take after his father?" repeated the girl in frank perplexity. Her own sweeping glance of her companion's face did not seem somehow to elucidate the mystery. "'Take?' 'Take after his father?'" she flamed. "I do not know the idiot—the idio—the—idiom!" she corrected herself triumphantly. 57

A little bit perplexed herself, the amiable stranger began suddenly to button up her coat. "Well, good night!" she beamed. "Good night! Good night! I hope you may both live to enjoy to the uttermost the full merits of your little family!"

"Eh?" jumped the Young Doctor. White as a sheet he was suddenly on his feet, and for the first time that evening a real-looking smile had twisted itself across at least one side of his thin-lipped mouth.

"Madam!" he bowed, "neither this young lady here nor I have ever laid eyes on each other before! Nor is it remotely probable indeed that in the normal course of events we should ever lay eyes on each other again! But if you persist so," he bowed, with a purely nervous glance at his watch, "but if you persist so—in your—in your—" he floundered futilely. "We shall doubtless be lying in the same grave by midnight!"

Without even a gasp then he snatched up the girl's purse, her suitcase, her hat box, his own coat and hat, and bolted for the cashier's desk.

Close behind him, clasping her scattered toys 58as best she might to her breast, followed the blonde Norse girl.

Even when they had finally reached the electric light post on the farthest corner of the street, the color was only just beginning to flush back into the Young Doctor's cheek bones.

"If you will now give me the address," he said tersely, "to which I can forward the supper money, I will put you on a street car."

"Oh, the address of course is of perfect simplicity," conceded the girl. "But I do not care for you to put me on a street car, thank you!"

"Why, certainly I shall put you on a street car!" insisted the Young Doctor. He was really quite sharp about it. "Almost every thing goes by here—if you only wait long enough," he shifted a bit uneasily, as he set down both box and suitcase with a most decided thump.

Silently then for what seemed to him an interminable time they stood there on the icy, wind-swept curbstone staring out into the passing green, red, yellow, lights.

"Pretty, is it not!" commented the girl at last. 59

"'Pretty?'" shivered the Young Doctor. "Why, yes, of course, suppose so. But which car?" he laughed impatiently. "For Heaven's sake, don't you know where you want to go?"

"Of course I know where I want to go!" flared the girl. With a little light touch on his sleeve she pointed off to another electric light post on a side street. "There!" she said. "That little pleasant fifth house from the end! That is where I am at boarding!"

"Well, why didn't you say so!" flushed the Young Doctor. Very vehemently once more he snatched up her suitcase and her hat box.

With a shrug of her fine athletic shoulders the