“I see there’s no use of me craving sympathy, as Mart Coogan said whin he broke through the floor overhead onto the table where the sewing society were drinking tay.”
“Doctor,” said his wife when she regained her self-command, “if all your patients were like him, we should die of starvation.”
“What caused your misgiving regarding your health?” gravely inquired the medical man.
“It wasn’t any partic’lar ailing, but the alarming loss of me appetite.”
“I should explain,” said Alvin, “that that never occurs until he leaves the table, which is generally about all that he does leave.”
“What am I to understand by _that_?” demanded Mike apparently in high dudgeon; “it sounds like a slur upon me truthfulness, as Jim Finnegan said when his friend called him a liar.”
“What are you all making so much noise about?”
It would be putting it mildly to say that the three youths were startled by this unexpected question. Around the corner of the house dashed a little girl, some four or five years old, who asked the peremptory question. She was dressed in a short khaki dress, with high tan shoes, and her abundant hair was gathered loosely by a red ribbon tied behind her neck. She wore no hat and in face and feature was a replica of her handsome mother, with a complexion more darkly tinted, not only on the face but on the chubby arms that were bare to the elbows. If Mike Murphy typified vigorous young manhood, this little one was an equally marked example of a perfectly healthy child.
The Irish youth was the first to break the brief silence which followed her question.
“Won’t ye come and shake hands wid me, Dorothy?”
Without stirring, she looked sharply at him.
“What makes you call me Dorothy? That isn’t my name.”
“I’ve been told that out of ivery ten little girls born in this counthry since Cleveland was President, nine of the same are named Dorothy; I beg yer pardon fur not knowing ye were the tenth.”
The picture of the pretty child was so winsome that Alvin and Chester each held out his hands invitingly, accompanying the gesture with a smile that was meant to be irresistible. The girl hesitated a moment, father and mother watching her, and then made a dive down the slight slope as if she intended to plunge into the lake, but her course led her between Alvin and Chester and into the arms of Mike, who gently lifted her upon his knee.