“Neither am I, Joe, for various reasons,” replied Burns, watching Johnny Caruthers try the Green Imp's spark. He jumped in beside Johnny and looked back at Joe. “Remember, now, keep things going just as I leave them, and I shall expect to find Letty nearly as well as ever when I see her again. I shall be back in five days. Good-bye.”
“Yes.”
“I'll be around when you get back, with some money.”
Burns looked the man in the eye. “Oh, come, Joe, don't say anything you don't mean.”
“I mean it this time, Doe—I sure do. Me and the old woman—we—Letty—” The fellow choked.
“All right, Joe. I'm as glad as you are Letty's safe. Take care of her. Take care of your wife. Do a stroke of good, back-breaking work once in a while. It'll help that tired feeling of yours that's getting to be dangerously chronic. You've no idea, Joe, what a satisfaction it is, now and then, to feel that you've accomplished something. Try it. Good-bye.”
He waved his hand at the woman in the door, who responded with a flutter of her dingy apron; which was immediately thereafter applied to her eyes. Within, by the window, a little pale-faced girl hugged a remarkable doll with yellow hair and a red silk frock.
“You'd ought to be pretty proud, Letty Tressler,” said the woman, returning to the small convalescent, “to think Doc kissed you when he left. He's been awful good to you, Doc has, and him with that arm in a sling a-bothering him all the time. But I didn't think he'd do that.”
“Maybe it's 'cause I'm so clean now,” speculated the child weakly. “When he did it he whispered in my ear that he liked clean faces.”
“Letty, you ain't goin' to have any kind o' face but a clean face after this, jest on account o' Doc Burns,” vowed her mother emotionally, and the child, her doll pressed against her face, nodded.