Dr. Joe waved his hand toward Mrs. MacAdams, and, as if he had been a wizard, she vanished. It was never her policy to argue with her employer.
“I don’t understand you,” said Dr. Joe to the Irishwoman. “What is it you want?”
He spoke almost gently, for something in this shabby, gray-haired stranger touched him. He didn’t care to eat his lunch and leave her sitting in the hall.
“Come here, Frankie!” said she.
From a shadowy corner, where he had been standing unobserved, came a small boy—a very small boy, thin and wiry, with red hair and a pale, freckled face; a sulky-looking little boy, very neatly dressed in a sailor suit and a cap which proclaimed him as belonging to the United States Navy.
“Take off yer cap, me lad,” said she, “and say good day to the doctor.”
Frankie snatched off the cap, but speak he would not.
“He’s a fantastical bye,” she explained. “Ye’d never believe the notions he has. What’s in his mind now is he wants to be a doctor; and I’ve come to see will ye make a doctor of him?”
Dr. Joe began to laugh, but he stopped when he saw the woman’s face.
“But you see—” he said. “A child of that age—how old is he?”