“I will, if my bookshop has one, or can get it for me in time.”

“There is little chance of your getting it there, Miss Durant,” interposed Dr. Armstrong; “but there is a place not far from here where stories of that character are kept; and if it will save you any trouble, I’ll gladly get one of them for you.”

“I have already overtaxed your kindness,” replied Constance, “and so will not trouble you in this.”

“It would be no trouble.”

“Thank you, but I shall enjoy the search myself.”

“Say,” broke in the urchin.  “Youse ought to let de doc do it.  Don’t youse see dat he wants to, ’cause he’s stuck on youse?”

“Then I’ll come to-morrow and read to you, Swot,” hastily remarked Miss Durant, pulling her veil over her face.  “Good-bye.”  Without heeding the boy’s “Dat’s fine,” or giving Dr. Armstrong a word of farewell, she went hurrying along the ward, and then downstairs, to her carriage.  Yet once within its shelter, the girl leaned back and laughed merrily.  “It’s perfectly absurd for him to behave so before all the nurses and patients, and he ought to know better.  It is to be hoped that was a sufficiently broad hint for his comprehension, and that henceforth he won’t do it.”

Yet it must be confessed that the boy’s remark frequently recurred that day to Miss Durant; and if it had no other result, it caused her to devote an amount of thought to Dr. Armstrong quite out of proportion to the length of the acquaintance.

Whatever the inward effect, Miss Durant could discover no outward evidence that Swot’s bombshell had moved Dr. Armstrong a particle more than her less pointed attempts to bring to him a realisation that he was behaving in a manner displeasing to her.  When she entered the ward the next morning, the doctor was again there, and this time at the waif’s bedside, making avoidance of him out of the question.  So with a “this-is-my-busy-day” manner, she gave him the briefest of greetings, and then turned to the boy.

“I’ve brought you some more goodies, Swot, and I found the story,” she announced triumphantly.

“Say, youse a winner, dat’s wot youse is; oin’t she, doc?  Wot’s de noime?”

Constance held up to him the red and yellow covered tale. “The Cracksman’s Spoil, or Young Sleuth’s Double Artifice" she read out proudly.

“Ah, g’way!  Dat oin’t no good.  Say, dey didn’t do a t’ing to youse, did dey?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dey sold youse fresh, dat’s wot dey did.  De Young Sleut books oin’t no good.  Dey’s nuttin’ but a fake extry.”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Constance, crestfallenly.  “It took me the whole afternoon to find it, but I did think it was what you wanted.”

“I was sceptical of your being able to get even an approach to newsboy literature, Miss Durant,” said Dr. Armstrong, “and so squandered the large sum of a dime myself.  I think this is the genuine article, isn’t it?” he asked, as he handed to the boy a pamphlet labelled Old Sleuth on the Trail.