"Be our boarder and I'll make it a real home for you, Jim!" she pleaded.
"Ah!--you'll be making a real home some day for one of those boys I saw at your birthday party--the tall dark one I think?"
"No. He doesn't measure up to my standard."
"He's a coward. My hero must be brave--for I'm timid."
"Then it will be that fat blond fellow with a jolly laugh?"
"No, he's a fibber. My Prince, when he comes, must be truthful. It's so hard for me always to tell the truth."
"Then it will be that dreamy looking one of fifteen you danced with twice?"
"No, he's too frail. My hero must be strong--for I am weak. And he must have a big, noble ideal of life; for mine is very small--just a little home nest, and a baby, and the love of one man!"
Stuart looked at her intently while a mist gathered in his eyes:
"I'm not sure about that being such a very small ideal, girlie!"
"But oh, my, I've forgotten what I came running home for! Papa sent me to ask you to please come down to the factory right away. He wants to see you on a very important matter. It must be awfully important. He looked so worried. I don't think I ever saw him worried before."
"I'll go at once," Stuart said, closing the window and blowing a kiss to the girl as he hurried down the stairs.
He strode rapidly across town toward the Bowery, through Fourth Street, wondering what could have happened to break the accustomed good humour of the doctor.
"Worry's something so utterly foreign to his character," the young lawyer mused.
The doctor had long since retired from the practise of medicine as a profession, and only used it now as his means of ministering to the wants of his neighbours. His neighbours were a large tribe, however, scattered all the way from the cellars and dives of Water Street to the shanties and goat ranges of the Upper Harlem. Stuart had never met a man so full of contagious health. He was a born physician. There was healing in the touch of his big hand. Healing light streamed from his brown eyes, and his iron-gray beard sparkled with it. His presence in a sick-room seemed to fill it with waves of life, and his influence over the patients to whom he ministered was little short of hypnotic.
"Christian Science is no new doctrine, my boy," he had said one day in answer to a question about the new cult.