I should have said, poor Little Doctor.  She tried to keep her frown and the fixed idea that went with it, but she was foolish enough to look down into Luck’s face and into his eyes with their sunny friendliness, and at the smile, where the friendliness was repeated and emphasized.  Before she quite knew what she was doing, the Little Doctor smiled back.  Still, she owned a fine quality of firmness.

“Come in here.  I want to have it out with you, and be done,” she said, and turned to open the door.

“Sounds bad, but I’m yours to command,” Luck retorted cheerfully, and went up the steps still smiling.  He liked the Little Doctor.  She was his kind of woman.  He felt that she would make a good pal, and he knew how few women are qualified for open comradeship.  He cast a side glance at the kitchen window where the Kid stood with a large slice of bread and chokecherry jam balanced on his palm, and on his face a look of mental distress bordered with more jam.  Luck nodded and waved his hand, and went in where the Little Doctor stood waiting for him with a certain ominous quiet in her manner.  Luck shook back his heavy mane of hair that was graying prematurely, squared his shoulders, and then held out his hand meekly, palm upward.  Boys learn that pose in school, you know.

“Oh, for pity’s sake!  If you go and make me laugh—­and I am mad enough at you, Luck Lindsay, to—­to blister that palm!  If you weren’t any bigger than Claude, I’d shake you and stand you in a corner on one foot.”

“Listen.  Shake me, anyway.  I believe I’d kinda like it.  And while I’m standing in the corner—­on one foot—­you can tell me all you’re mad at me for.”

The Little Doctor looked at him, bit her lip, and then found that her eyes were blurred so that his face seemed to waver and grow dim.  And Luck Lindsay, because he saw the tears, laid a hand on her shoulder, and pushed her ever so gently into a chair.

“Tell me what’s worrying you.  If it’s anything that I have done, I’ll have one of the boys take me out and shoot me; it’s what I would deserve.  But I certainly can’t think of anything—­”

“Do you know that you have filled little Claude’s mind up with stories about moving pictures till he’s just crazy?  He told me just now that he’s going with you when you go back, and act in your company.  And if I won’t let him go, he said, he’d run away and ’hit a freight-train outa Dry Lake,’ and get to California, anyway.  And—­he’d do it, too!  He’s perfectly awful when he gets an idea in his head.  I know he’s spoiled—­all the boys pet him so—­”

“Wait.  Let’s get this thing straight.  Do you think for one minute, Mrs. Bennett, that I’d coax the Kid away?  Say, that hurts—­to have you believe that of me.”  There was no smile anywhere on Luck’s face now.  His eyes were as pained as his voice sounded.

Once more the Little Doctor weakened before him.  She believed what he said, though five minutes before she had believed exactly the opposite.  In her mind she had accused him of coaxing the Kid.  She had fully intended accusing him of it to his face.