es as
he said: "Oh, I'd take care of you. You aren't afraid of me, are you?"

They both laughed. And the girl came over with a sheet of paper. "Here
is that Midland Valley letter. Will you sign it now?"

He managed to touch her hand as she handed him the sheet, and again to
touch her bare forearm as he handed it back after signing it. For which
he got two darts from her eyes.

A client came in. Joseph Calvin hurried in and out, a busy little rat of
a man who always wore shiny clothes that bagged at the knees and elbows.
George Brotherton crashed in through the office on city business, and so
the afternoon wore away. At the end of the day, Thomas Van Dorn and Miss
Mauling locked up the office and went down the hall and the stairs to
the street together. He released her arm as they came to the street, and
tipped his hat as she rounded the corner for home. He saw the white-clad
Doctor trudging up the low incline that led to Elm Street.

Dr. Nesbit was asking the question, Who are the fit? Who should survive?
His fingers had been pinched in the door of the young Judge's philosophy
and the Doctor was considering much that might be behind the door. He
wondered if it was the rich and the powerful who should survive. Or he
thought perhaps it is those who give themselves for others. There was
Captain Morton with his one talent, pottering up and down the town
talking all kinds of weather, and all kinds of rebuffs that he might
keep the girls in school and make them ready to serve society; yet
according to Tom's standards of success the Captain was unfit; and there
was George Brotherton, ignorant, but loyal, foolishly blind, of a tender
heart, yet compared with those who used his ignorance and played upon
his blindness (and the Doctor winced at his part in that game) Mr.
Brotherton was cast aside among the world's unfit; and so was Henry
Fenn, fighting with his devil like a soldier; and so was Dick Bowman
going into the mines for his family, sacrificing light and air and the
joy of a free life that the wife and children might be clad, housed and
fed and that they might enjoy something of the comforts of the great
civilization which his toil was helping to build up around them; yet in
his grime Dick was accounted exceedingly unfit. Dick only had a number
on the company's books and his number corresponded to a share of stock
and it was the business of the share of stock to get as much out of Dick
and give him back as little, and