‘No, I don’t,’ said Ruth, forgetting her nervousness all at once, and lifting the child boldly off the floor. ‘You’ve got to be examined to see if you can do gymnastics, that’s all. He’s in Finny’s study, waiting for you.’ She carried her playfully under her arm and set her down on the further side of the curtain. Whatever the other tiresome children might think of her, she knew that the Babe never criticised her, and that gave her confidence.
Barbara was still a little dubious about the sense of seeing a doctor when she did not feel ill; but she trotted across the hall obediently and went into Finny’s study. She was only half conscious of what she was doing, for she had been taken from her letter too abruptly to have had time to wake up properly; and Babs always required plenty of time to wake up, when she had been absorbed in anything. So the solemn-looking young man, who sat in the low arm-chair, was a little upset when she not only gave him her hand to shake but also put up her face to be kissed as a matter of course.
Dr. Wilson Hurst, in spite of Kit’s idea of his age, was only twenty-eight and quite young enough to feel extremely bashful. He jerked back his head suddenly; and Barbara woke up.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, smiling. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Of course you don’t want to be kissed; I shouldn’t have dreamed of kissing you at home, you know, because the boys feel just like you about kissing. But Ruth kisses me such lots, and everybody seems to kiss everybody else here, so I suppose I’ve rather got into the way of––’
Here Miss Finlayson said ‘Hush!’ very softly; and the doctor pulled something so queer and interesting out of his pocket at the same time, that Barbara forgot everything else. ‘What are you going to do with that funny thing? Is it a speaking-tube?’ she asked curiously.
‘I’m going to see whether your heart is in the right place,’ answered the doctor, and he was immediately so overcome at his stupendous levity in making a joke over a medical examination, that he did not speak another word till it was completed. As for Babs, she was immensely interested the whole time, and never took her bright little eyes off his face once.
‘Is it in the right place?’ she asked him, when he put the queer-looking thing back in his pocket again.
‘Yes,’ said the doctor, briefly.
‘Is anybody’s in the wrong place?’ pursued Babs, leaning against his knee in the most friendly way imaginable.
‘Sometimes,’ said the doctor. He marvelled at himself for not feeling more irritated by her, when as a rule he found children so worrying.