The ardor of the inspired guide was his, and with each exclamation from her the joy of his task doubled itself.

“If you think this is great, wait—­just you wait.  Gee! if you like this, what would you have said to the farm?  Wait till we get to the top of the hill.”

Fallen leaves, crisp as paper, crackled pleasantly under their feet; and through the haze that is October’s veil glowed a reddish sun, vague as an opal.  A footpath crawled like a serpent through the woods and they followed it, kicking up the leaves before them, pausing, darting, exclaiming.

“I—­Honest, Mr. Blaney, I—­”

“Eddie!”

“Eddie, I—­I never did feel so—­I never was so—­so—­Aw, I can’t say it.”  Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Sure you never was.  I never was, neither, before—­before—­”

“Before what?”

“Before I had to.”

“Had to?”

“Yeh; both of them.  Bleeding all the time.  Didn’t see nothing but red for ’leven months.”

“You!”

“Yeh; three years ago.  Looked like Arizona on a stretcher for me.”

“You—­so big and strong and all!”

He smiled at her and his teeth flashed.  “Gad! little girl, if you got a right to be scared, whatta you think I had?  I seen your card over at the clinic last night, and you ’ain’t got no right to have that down-and-out look on you had this morning.  If you think you got something to be scared at you looka my old card at the clinic some day; they keep it for show.  You oughtta seen me the day I quit the shipping-room, right over at the Titanic, too, and then see whether you got something to be scared at.”

“You—­you used to work there?”

“Six years.”

“I—­I ain’t scared no more, Eddie; honest, I ain’t!”

“Gee!  I should say not!  They ain’t even sending you up to the farm.”

“No, no!  They’re going to get me a job.  A regular outdoor, on-the-level kind of a job.  A grand old doc, with whiskers!  I ain’t a regular one, Eddie; just the bottom of one lung don’t make a regular one.”

“Well, I guess not, poor little missy.  Well, I guess not.”

“Three months, he said, Eddie.  Three months of right living like this, and air and all, and I’ll be as round as a peach, he said.  Said it hisself, without me asking—­that’s how scared I was.  Round as a peach!”

“You can’t beat that gang over there at the clinic, little missy.  They took me out of the department when all the spring-water I knew about ran out of a keg.  Even when they got me out on the farm—­a grown-up guy like me—­for a week I thought the crow in the rooster was a sidewalk faker.  You can’t beat that, little missy.”

“He’s a grand old man, with whiskers, that’s going to get me the job.  Then in three months I—­”

“Three months nothing!  That gang won’t let you slip back after the three months.  They took a extra shine to me because I did the prize-pupil stunt; but they won’t let anybody slip back if they give ’em half a chance.  When they got me sound again, did they ship me back to the shipping department in the subbasement?  Not muchy!  Looka me now, little missy!  Clerk in their biggest display; in three months a raise to ninety dollars.  Can you beat it?  Ninety dollars would send all the shipping-clerks of the world off in a faint.”