“I’m low because I haven’t got a lady friend, Miss Boyd.”  He held up a sheet of prescription paper and squinted at it.  “Also because the medical profession writes with its feet, apparently.  I’ve done everything to this but dip it in acid.  I’ve had it pinned to the wall, and tried glancing at it as I went past.  Sometimes you can surprise them that way.  But it does no good.  I’m going to take it home and dream on it, like bride’s cake.”

“They’re awful, aren’t they?”

“When I get into the Legislature,” said Willy Cameron, “I’m going to have a bill passed compelling doctors to use typewriters.  Take this now.  Read upside down, its horse liniment.  Read right side up, it’s poison.  And it’s for internal use.”

“What d’you mean you haven’t got a lady friend?”

“The exact and cruel truth.”  He smiled at her, and had Miss Boyd been more discerning she might have seen that the smile was slightly forced.  Also that his eyes were somewhat sunken in his head.  Which might, of course, have been due to too much political economy and history, and the eminent divines on Sunday evenings.  Miss Boyd, however, was not discerning, and moreover, she was summoning her courage to a certain point.

“Why don’t you ask me to go to the movies some night?” she said.  “I like the movies, and I get sick of going alone.”

“My dear child,” observed Willy Cameron, “if that young man in the sack suit who comes in to see you every day were three inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter, I’d ask you this minute.”

“Oh, him!” said Miss Boyd, with a self-conscious smile.  “I’m through with him.  He’s a Bolshevik!”

“He has the Bolshevist possessive eye,” agreed Willy Cameron, readily.  “Does he know you are through with him?  Because that’s important, too.  You may know it, and I may know it, but if he doesn’t know it—­”

“Why don’t you say right out you don’t want to take me?” Willy Cameron’s chivalrous soul was suddenly shocked.  To his horror he saw tears in Miss Boyd’s eyes.

“I’m just a plain idiot, Miss Edith,” he said.  “I was only fooling.  It will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the movies, or anywhere else.  We’ll make it to-night, if that suits you, and I’ll take a look through the neighborhood at noon and see what’s worth while.”

The Eagle Pharmacy was a small one in a quiet neighborhood.  During the entire day, and for three evenings a week, Mr. William Wallace Cameron ran it almost single-handed, having only the preoccupied assistance of Miss Boyd in the candy and fancy goods.  At the noon and dinner hours, and four evenings a week, he was relieved by the owner, Mr. Davis, a tired little man with large projecting ears and worried, child-like eyes, who was nursing an invalid wife at home.  A pathetic little man, carrying home with unbounded faith day after day bottles of liquid foods and beef capsules, and making wistful comments on them when he returned.