He had avoided going near the General Hospital in his strolls about town, viewing that building from a safe distance and imagining all sorts of things. Perhaps Miss Gray had left. Perhaps she was ill. Or she might have married! Still, she would have told him, he thought.
Doris never knew what a struggle it cost Pete—to say nothing of hard cash—to purchase that bottle of perfume. But he did it, marching into a drug-store and asking for a bottle of "the best they had," and paying for it without a quiver. Back in his room he emptied about half of the bottle on his handkerchief, wedged the handkerchief into his pocket, and marched to the street, determination in his eye, and the fumes of half a vial of Frangipanni floating in his wake.
Perhaps the Frangipanni stimulated him. Perhaps the overdose deadened his decision to stay away from the hospital. In any event, that afternoon he betook himself to the hospital, and was fortunate in finding Andover there, to whom he confided the obvious news that he was in town—and that he would like to see little Ruth for a minute, if it was all right.
Andover told him that little Ruth had been taken to her home a month ago—and Pete wondered how she could still miss him, as Miss Gray had intimated in her last letter. And as he wondered he saw light—not a great light, but a faint ray which was reflected in his face as he asked Andover when Miss Gray would be relieved from duty, and if it would be possible to see her then.
Andover thought it might be possible, and suggested that he let Miss Gray know of Pete's presence; but some happy instinct caused Pete to veto that suggestion.
"It ain't important," he told Andover. "I'll jest mosey around about six, and step in for a minute. Don't you say I'm in town!"
Andover gazed curiously after Pete as the latter marched out. The surgeon shook his head. Mixed drinks were not new to Andover, but he could not for the life of him recognize what Pete had been drinking.
Doris, who had not been thinking of Pete at all,—as she was not a spiritualist, and had always doubted that affinities were other than easy excuses for uneasy morals,—came briskly down the hospital steps, gowned in a trim gray skirt and a jacket, and a jaunty turban that hid just enough of her brown hair to make that which was visible the more alluring. She almost walked into Pete—for, as it has been stated, she was not thinking of him at all, but of the cozy evening she would spend with her sister at the latter's apartments on High Street. Incidentally Doris was thinking, just a little, of how well her gown and turban became her, for she had determined never to let herself become frowsy and slipshod—Well—she had not to look far for her antithesis.
"Why, Mr. Annersley!"
Pete flushed, the victim of several emotions. "Good-evenin', Miss Gray. I—I thought I'd jest step in and say 'Hello' to that little kid."