“Could you stand it?”
“So you think I’m a butterfly, too, do you, Daddy-Doctor? Well, I want to prove to you that I’m not. I’ve been doing my best to get used to dirt and distress. I washed a little sick Italian baby yesterday and helped it’s mother scrub her floor and make the house clean.”
“The dickens you did!” beamed the doctor proudly. “I always knew you had a lot of grit. I guess you’ve got the right stuff in you. But say, if I help you you’ve got to tell me the real reason why you want to go, or else—nothing doing! Understand? I know you aren’t like the rest, just wanting to get into the excitement and meet a lot of officers and have a good time so you can say afterward you were there. You aren’t that kind of a girl. What’s the real reason you want to go? Have you got somebody over there you’re interested in?”
He looked at her keenly, with loving, anxious eyes as her father’s friend who had known her from birth might look.
Ruth’s face grew rosy, and her eyes dropped, but lifted again undaunted:
“And if I have, Daddy-Doctor, is there anything wrong about that?”
The doctor frowned:
“It isn’t that fat chump of a Wainwright, is it? Because if it is I shan’t lift my finger to help you go.”
But Ruth’s laugh rang out clear and free.
“Never! dear friend, never! Set your mind at rest about him,” she finished, sobering down. “And if I care for someone, Daddy-Doctor, can’t you trust me I’d pick out someone who was all right?”