“Yes, you can, Davy.  Papa’s here.  Lie down, Davy.  Here’s a drink.”

And in the morning all would be well.  Davy would be in the library preparing for a great article.

The tribe on the other street, back, played ball from morning until night.  The toddler of the lot was no bigger than Davy.  Every face was as round and red as a Spitzbergen apple.

Last summer Lockwin and Davy went for a ball and bat, the people along the cross-street as usual admiring the boy.  A blacksmith shop was on the way.  A white bulldog was at the forge.  He leaped away from his master, and was on the walk in an instant.  With a dash he was on Davy, his heavy paw in the neat little pocket, bursting it and strewing the marbles and the written articles.  Snap! went the mouth on the child’s face, but it was merely a caprice.

“Bulldog never bite a child,” observed the blacksmith.

But Lockwin had time only to take his baby between his legs.  “Please call in your dog,” he said to the blacksmith.  “Please call him in.  Please call him in.”

The dog was recalled.  The child smiled, and yet he felt he had been ill served.  The little hanging pocket testified that Lockwin must tarry in that hateful locality and pick up the treasure and documents.

Trembling in every joint, he called at the house of an acquaintance.  “I dislike to keep you here,” said the friend, “if you are afraid of the whooping-cough.  We have it here in the house.”

It seemed to David Lockwin that the city was an inhospitable place for childhood.  The man and child traveled on and on.  They reached the toy store.  They stood before the soda fountain.  They bought bat and ball.

It was too far.  They rode by street car three miles in order to return the half mile.  The child was asleep when they reached home.

“I drank sewer water,” he observed to the housekeeper, speaking of the soda fountain, for sewer gas is a thing for Chicagoans to discuss with much learning.

So Davy and David went on the rear lot to play ball.  The neighboring tribe offered their services for two-old-cat.  The little white boy with the golden curls made a great hit.

“Bully for the codger!” quoth all the red-cheeked.

“We will cut off his curls and make him as healthy as those young ones,” said Lockwin.

“You’ll never do it!” said the housekeeper.

“Such as him do be too pretty for this life,” said the cook, almost with tears in her eyes.

And just at this epoch of new hygiene Davy’s eyes grew sore.  “Take him to a specialist,” said Dr. Tarpion.

The specialist made the eyes a little worse.

“Them’s just such eyes as Dr. Floddin cured on my sister,” said the peddling huckster’s son at the kitchen door.

The housekeeper could say as much for a relative whom the cheap druggist had served.

“Can you cure my boy?” was Lockwin’s question to Dr. Floddin.