“If you’d hold your head straight, little chump, not so far to one side, you’d be better balanced,” Shayle advised from his down-leaning, critical inspection.
“I won’t and I never will.” Jack stopped to glare back at his trainer. “John always holds his head to one side and I guess he walks all right.”
“Oh well, if John does! Like father like son—beautiful sentiment.” At once the doctor passed the point. Giving up seemed to be his policy. “That’s enough hiking for to-day, old scout. Just let me feel those knee muscles. No, not a regular boy-handling on the bed. Just a touch to see if they aren’t working better to-day.”
During the operation into which Shayle had inveigled his patient, Dolores observed that his hands, while freckled and rather thick, were drawn into slender fingers, pointed at the tips, with nails neatly manicured.
“You’ve cheated—you’re hurting me like a real treatment!” shrieked Jack and beat his practitioner in the face until able to wriggle out of his grasp.
Dr. Shayle changed the subject as promptly as he gave up his attempt. “Have a heart, Mister Dempsey. Wait a minute—I want to say something. What’s become of the Cabot courtesy? You haven’t asked Miss Trent to take off her things.”
“We were so busy getting acquainted!” Dolores, with a confidential glance at the boy, lifted her hands to her hat.
“Allow me to make up for friend pugilist’s oversight.” With that coaxing laugh of his, Shayle arose to help with the Duvetyn coat.
In the act, his hand touched the pulse at the side of her throat. With the contact, a strange sensation quivered through her, disturbing, yet somehow pleasant. Evidently he, too, had felt it. He looked straight into her eyes a moment, his face suddenly serious.
“Ah!”