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“They serve it fresh, every morning, right here in Our Square,” Mayme pointed out.

“Good idea. Get up early and fill your lungs full of it for an hour every day.” He gave some further instructions.

Mayme produced a dollar, and delicately placed it on the mantel.

“Take it away,” said the Little Red Doctor. “Didn’t I tell you–“

“Go-wan!” said Mayme. “Whadda you think you are; Bellevue Hospital? I pay as I go, Doc.”

The Little Red Doctor frowned austerely.

“What’s the matter? Face hurt you?” asked the solicitous Mayme.

“People don’t call me ‘Doc,'” began the offended practitioner in dignified tones.

“Oh, that’s because they ain’t on to you,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t call you ‘Doc’ myself if I didn’t know you was a good sport back of your bluff.”

The Little Red Doctor grinned, looking first at Mayme and then at the dollar. “You aren’t such a bad sport yourself,” he admitted. “Well, we’ll call this a deal. But if I see you in the Square and give you a tip about yourself now and again, that doesn’t count. That’s on the side. Understand?”

She considered it gravely. “All right,” she agreed at length. “Between pals, yes? Shake, Doc.”

So began the quaint friendship between our hard-worked, bluff, knightly-hearted practitioner, and the impish and lovable little store-girl. Also another of the innumerable tilts between him and his old friend, Death.

“He’s got the jump on me, Dominie,” complained the Little Red Doctor to me. “But, at that, we’re going to give him a fight. She’s clear grit, that youngster is. She’s got a philosophy of life, too. I don’t know where she got it, or just what it is, but it’s there. Oh, she’s worth saving, Dominie.”

“If I hadn’t reason to think you safeguarded, my young friend,” said I, “I’d give you solemn warning.”

“Why, she’s an infant!” returned the Little Red Doctor scornfully. “A poor, little, monkey-faced child. Besides–” He stopped and sighed.

“Yes; I know,” I assented. There was at that time a “Besides” in the Little Red Doctor’s sorrowful heart which bulked too large to admit of any rivalry. “Nevertheless,” I added, “you needn’t be so scornful about the simian type in woman. It’s a concentrated peril to mankind. I’ve seen trouble caused in this world by kitten faces, by pure, classic faces, by ox-eyed-Juno faces, by vivid blond faces, by dreamy, poetic faces, by passionate Southern faces, but for real power of catastrophe, for earthquake and eclipse, for red ruin and the breaking up of laws, commend me to the humanized, feminized monkey face. I’ll wager that when Antony first set eyes on Cleopatra, he said, ‘And which cocoa palm did she fall out of?’ Phryne was of the beautified baboon cast of features, and as for Helen of Troy, the best authorities now lean to the belief that the face that launched a thousand ships and fired the topless towers of Ilium was a reversion to the arboreal. I tell you, man that is born of woman cannot resist it. Give little Mayme three more years–“

“I wish to God I could,” said the Little Red Doctor.

“Can’t you?” I asked, startled. “Is it as bad as that?”

“It isn’t much better. How’s your insomnia, Dominie?”

“Insomnia,” said I, “is a scientific quibble for unlaid memories. I take mine out for the early morning air at times, if that’s what you mean.”

“It is. Keep an eye on the kid, and do what you can to prevent that busy little mind of hers from brooding.”

In that way Mayme McCartney and I became early morning friends. She adopted for her special own a bench some rods from mine under the lilac near the fountain. After her walk, taken with her thin shoulders flung back and the chest filling with deep, slow breaths, she would pay me a call or await one from me and we would exchange theories and opinions and argue about this and other worlds. Seventy against seventeen. Fair exchange, for, if mine were the riper creed, hers was the more vivid and adventurous. Who shall say which was the sounder?