an occasional calling down and a few scratches. If id had the luck to
get into aviation or some of the fancy branches david checked
himself. There i go, he said in selfdisgust. Beefing again.
It was quite in the old, spoiledchild tone an echo of indestructible
personality, the weeping scion of other days and it went straight to
marys swelling, bewildered, groping heart. She began to laugh and a sob
tangled itself in the laughter, and she choked and said
buddy.
He turned toward her.
ache with longing to hear it in your voice.
Youre a queer buddy, returned the girl, not quite steadily. Did you
bring me home a german helmet for a souvenir.
He shook his head. I didnt bring home much of anything, except some
experience and the discovery of the fact that when i had to stand on my
own feet, i wasnt much.
You got your stripes, didnt you. Suggested the girl.
Thats all i did get, he returned jealously. I didnt get any medal,
or palms or decorations or crosses of war i didnt get anything except
Mayme.
No not mayme any more.
He flushed to his temples. I beg your pardon, miss courtenay.
Nonsense. She said softly. Mary. Ive discarded the mayme long
ago.
Mary, he repeated in a tone of musing content.
Buddy.
He caught his breath. A few thousand of the best guys in the world, he
said, call a fellow that. And every time they said it, it made my heart
his face that was the study.
Of that performance i shall say nothing. It is now famous and familiar
to thousands of theatergoers. But if ever mortal man spent twenty
minutes in fairyland, it was david, while mary was playing the work of
his fancy. At the close, he disappeared. I suppose he did not dare trust
himself to join in the congratulations with which she was overwhelmed. I
found him, as i rather expected, on the bench where he had sat when
mayme mccartney first found him. And when the crowd had departed from
the studio, i told the girl. Without even stopping to put on her hat she
was only too obviously her adoring slave. Already there had been hints
of their engagement. Had i been that ace, i should have felt no small
discomposure at the sight of the girls face when she first saw the
changed and matured weeping scion of three years before. After the first
flash of recognition she had developed on that expressive face of hers a
look of wonder and almost pathetic questioning, and, i thought, who knew
and loved the child, already something deeper and sweeter. Young david,
after greeting the star of the evening, took a modest rear seat as
befitted his rank. But when the bonnie lassie announced doggy, it was
urged him to pass on from that unchancy spot. All that he could learn
about the basement dweller was that his name was lukisch and he owed
for his rent.
Mr. Lukisch had nothing special against the queer old party who made
sheeps eyes at his clock every day. He hated him quite impartially, as
he hated everybody. Mr. Lukisch had a bad heart in more senses than one,
and a grudge against the world which he blamed for the badness of his
heart. Also he had definite ideas of reprisal, which were focused by a
dispossess notice, and directed particularly upon the person and
Oh, dominie. Said the girl, with such reproach that my heart sank
within me. Do you think that was fair. Dont you know that i never
could have taken the money.
Precisely. And we had to find a way to make you take it. We couldnt
have you dying on the premises, i argued with a feeble attempt at
jocularity.
But from him. She said. After what had happenedand his mother.
How could you let me do it.
I thought you would have gotten over that feeling by this time, i
willy woolly from the house of silvery voices, and admirably he played
it, barking accurately and with true histrionic fervor in the right
places besides promptly falling in love with the star at the first and
only rehearsal. After the tryout, mary came over to my bench with a
check for a rather dazzling sum in her hand, and said that now was the
time to settle accounts, but she never could repayand so forth and so
on all put so sweetly and genuinely that i heartily wished i might
accept the thanks if not the check. Instead of which i blurted out
the truth.
No announcements, even of the most modest description, heralded the
arrival of sergeant major if you please. David berthelin upon his
native shores. He came at once to our square and tackled the little
red doctor.
Where is she. He asked.
The little red doctor assumed an air of incredulous surprise. Have you
still got that bee in your bonnet. Said he.
Where is she. Repeated the weeping scion.
Maneuvering for time and counsel, the little red doctor took him to see
At that, you were all wrong about buddy. He was a lot decenter than you
thought only he was brought up wrong. Give him my love as one pal to
another. I hope he dont come back a hero. Im offen heroes, too.
Excuse again.
Wars and exiles alike come to an end in time. And in time our two
wanderers returned, but mary first, david having been sent into germany
with the army of occupation. Modest announcements in the theatrical
columns informed an indifferent theatergoing world that miss marie
courtenay, an actress new to broadway, was to play the ingenue part in
the latest comedy by a highly popular dramatist. Immediately upon the
production, the theatergoing world ceased to be indifferent to the new
actress in fact, it went into one of its occasional furores about her.
Not that she was in any way a great genius, but she had a certain
indefinable and winningly individual quality. The critics discussed it
gravely and at length, differing argumentatively as to its nature and
constitution. I could have given them a hint. My predictions regarding
the ancestral potencies of the monkeyface were being abundantly
justified.
Did you think i would not know it was david. Why, bless your dear, silly
heart, i told him some of those stories myself. But how does he get a
chance to write them. Is he back on this side. Or is he invalided. Or
what. Tell me. I want to know about him. You do not have to worry about
mywell, my infatuation for him, any more. He was a pretty boy, though,
wasnt he. But i have seen too many of that kind in the picture game.
Im spoiled for them. How i would love to smear some of their pretty,
smirky faces. They give me a queer feeling in my breakfast. Excuse me i
forgot i was a lady. But dont say pretty to me any more. Im through.
fritzie before the show is over.
Thereafter the little red doctor exhibited, but read to us only in small
parts, quite bulky communications from overseas. Some of them, it became
known, he was forwarding to our little mary, out in the far west. With
her answer came the solution.
Some of the grass and asphalt sketches are wonders some not so good.
I am going to try out doggy if i can find a poodle with enough
intelligence to support me. But you need not have been so mysterious,
doc, about your young amateur writer who seems to have some talent.
negotiations had been frustrated by a crabbed and violentlooking man
with a repellent club. Nevertheless, the voice alone had ensnared the
connoisseur it was, by the test of the pipe which he carried on all his
quests, d in alt, and would thus complete the major chord of a chime
which he had long been building up. She had loved, best of all,
harmonic combinations of the clock bells. Every day he would halt in
front of the place and wait to hear it strike, and its owner would peer
out from behind it and shake a wasted fist and curse him with strange,
hoarse foreign oaths, while willy woolly tugged at his trouser leg and
In the correspondence from sergeant berthelin there came a long hiatus
followed by a curt bit of official information seriously wounded. The
little red doctor brought the news to me, with a queer expression on
his face.
It doesnt look good, dominie, he said. You know, my old friend,
death, is a shrewd picker. Hes got an eye for men. He mused, rubbing
his tousled, brickish locks with a nervous hand. I was getting to kind
of like that young pup, he muttered moodily.
The saying that no news is good news was surely concocted by some one
fellow can get himself made a captain by pull, or a major by luck, or a
colonel by deskwork, or a general by having a fine martial figure, but
to get yourself made a sergeant, by gosh, youve got to show the
stuff. Youve got to be a man. Youve got to have
are you going to tell her. Interrupted the bonnie lassie who had been
sent for to share the news.
The little red doctor fell suddenly grave. Shes another matter, he
said. I dont think i shall.
Matters were going forward with maymebeg her pardon, mary mccartney,
scion kept his head and his nerve, and made good. A corporals stripes
arent much, but theyre something.
Better was to come. There was high triumph in the little red doctors
expression when he came to my bench with the glad tidings of young
davids promotion to a sergeantcy.
While its very gratifying, i remarked, it doesnt seem to me an
epochmaking event.
Doesnt it. Retorted my friend. Thats because of your abysmal
military ignorance, dominie. Let me tell you how it is in our army. A
indeed, from broadway, having been shifted to a specially wet and muddy
section of france and was taking them as he found them. That is to say,
he had learned the prime lesson of war.
And hes been made corporal, announced the little red doctor with
satisfaction.
That sounds encouraging, remarked the bonnie lassie. How did it
happen.
He went over on one of the flu ships, and when the epidemic began to
mow em down there was a kind of panic. From what i can make out, the
switch. Tell the little red doctor that it is so long since i coughed i
have forgotten how. And i love you all so hard that it hurts.
Your loving
mary mccartney
p.s. I am going to be marie courtenay when i get my name up in the
pictures. Put that in the directory and see how it looks.
P.s.2. How is my soldier boy getting along. Poor kid. I expect he is
finding it a lot different from broadway with money in your pocket.
About this time the weeping scion was finding things very different,
What do you think. Wrote our exile. Theyve got my funny little
monkey mug in the movies. Five per and steady work. The director likes
me and says he will give me a real chance one of these days. But, as the
dominie would say, this is a hell of a place. Graceless imp. I would
not say it myself, because i am a perfect lady. You have to be, out
here. That reminds me i have cut out the mayme. Every fresh little
frizzle in the colony with a false front and a pneumatic figure calls
herself mayme or daisye or tootsye. Not for me. I am keeping up my
lessons and trying to make my head good for something besides carrying a