“Hello,” he said gruffly, for his voice was just a trifle hoarse (voices get that way sometimes, when visions will stay in front of one’s eyes!) “Hello, youngster!  Do you want anything?  Or are you just looking around?”

Bennie straightened up.  The kitten that he had been patting rubbed reassuringly against his legs, but Bennie needed more reassurance than the affection of a kitten can give.  The kindness of Rose-Marie, the stories that she had told him, had given him a great deal of confidence.  But he had not yet learned to stand up, fearlessly, to a big man with a gruff voice.  It is a step forward to have stopped hurting the smaller things.  But to accept a pretty lady’s assurance that things larger than you will be kind—­that is almost too much to expect!  Bennie answered just a shade shrinkingly.

“Th’ kids in school,” he muttered, “tol’ me ’bout a club they come to here.  It’s a sort of a Scout Club.  They wears soldier clo’s.  An’ they does things fer people.  An’ I wanter b’long,” he gulped, noisily.

The Young Doctor leaned against the wall.  He did not realize how tall and strong he looked, leaning there, or he could not have smiled so whimsically.  To him the small dark boy with his earnest face, standing beside the gray kitten, was just an interesting, rather lovable joke.

“Which do you want most,” he questioned, “to wear soldier clothes, or to do things for people?”

Bennie gulped again, and shuffled his feet.  His voice came, at last, rather thickly.

“I sorter want to do things fer people!” he said.

More than anything else the Young Doctor hated folk, even children, who say or do things for effect.  And he knew well the lure that soldier clothes hold for the small boy.

“Say, youngster,” he inquired in a not too gentle voice, “are you trying to bluff me?  Or do you really mean what you’re saying?  And if you do—­why?”

Bennie had never been a quitter.  By an effort he steadied his voice.

“I mean,” he said, “what I’m a-tellin’ yer.  I wanter be a good boy.  My pa, he drinks.  He drinks like—­” The word he used, in description, was not the sort of a word that should have issued from childish lips.  “An’ my big brother—­he ain’t like Pa, but he’s a bum, too!  I don’t wanter be like they are—­not if I kin help it!  I wanter be th’ sort of a guy King Arthur was, an’ them knights of his’n.  I wanter be like that there St. George feller, as killed dragons.  I wanter do real things,” unconsciously he was quoting from the gospel of Rose-Marie, “wi’ my life!  I wanter be a good husban’ an’ father—­”

All at once the Young Doctor was laughing.  It was not an unkind laugh—­it gave Bennie heart to listen to it—­but it was exceedingly mirthful.  Bennie could not know that the idea of himself, as a husband and father, was sending this tall man into such spasms of merriment—­he could not know that it was rather incongruous to picture his small grubby form in the shining armour of St. George or of King Arthur.  But, being glad that the doctor was not angry, he smiled too—­his strange, twisted little smile.