th a
smiling face. Never had she seemed so joyous, so filled with the desire
of life. This much was to be counted on the credit side, the Little Red
Doctor said. On the debit side--well, to me was deputed the unwelcome
task of conveying the solemn, and, as it were, official protest and
warning of Our Square. Of course I did it at the worst possible moment.
It was early one morning, when Mayme, on her bench, was looking a little
hollow-eyed and disillusioned. I essayed the light and jocular approach
to the subject:

"Well, Mayme; how is the ardent swain?"

She turned to me with the old flash in her big, shadowed eyes: "Did you
say swain or swine, Dominie?"

"Ah!" said I. "Has he changed his role?"

"He's given himself away, if that's what you mean."

"I thought that would come."

"He--he wanted me to take a trip to Boston with him."

I considered this bit of information, which was not as surprising or
unexpected as Mayme appeared to deem it. "Have you told the Little
Red Doctor?"

"Doc'd kill him," said Mayme simply.

"What better reason for telling?"

"Oh, the poor kid: he don't know any better."

"Doesn't he? In any case I trust that you know better, after this, than
to have anything more to do with him."

"Yep. I've cut him out," replied Mayme listlessly. "I figured you and
Doc were right, Dominie. It's no good, his kind of game. Not for girls
like me." She looked up at me with limpid eyes, in which there was
courage and determination and suffering.

"My dear," I murmured, "I hope it isn't going to be too hard."

"He's so pretty," said Mayme McCartney wistfully.

So he was, now that I came to think of it. With his clear, dark color,
his wavy hair, his languishing brown eyes, his almost girlishly graceful
figure, and his beautiful clothes, he was pretty enough to fascinate any
inexperienced imagination. But I cannot say that he looked pretty when,
a few days later, he invaded Our Square in search of a Mayme who had
vanished beyond his ken (she had kept her tenement domicile a secret
from him), and, addressing me as "you white-whiskered old goat," accused
me of having come between him and the girl upon whom he had deigned to
bestow his lordly favor. Unfortunately for him, the Little Red Doctor
chanced along just then and inquired, none too deferentially, what the
Scion of Wealth and Position was doing in that quarter.

"What business is it of yours, Red-Head?" countered the offended
visitor.

He t