"Because you are not in the least like any country doctor I ever came across; and I am sure you would never bear being buried in rural depths. You belong to cities, and people."
"I hoped I had managed to hide my proclivity for gutters," he answered laughing. "I am afraid you are right. A big city draws me like a magnet. I can say with the poet, 'The need of a world of men for me.' The finest scenery in the world does not make up to me, for the lack of human beings."
"Then you are a town person?"
"Very much a town person. My home and work lie in a rather sordid, very poor—to me, enthrallingly interesting—corner of South London. I am only here for a time, doing his work for an old acquaintance, and incidentally getting a change I rather needed."
"You knocked yourself up with work in South London?"
"Not quite that. I got a little played out, and the air of this place has more than set me up. I shall go back like a giant refreshed."
"They are chiefly poor people, your patients?" she questioned.
"Almost entirely poor. It is always interesting work, sometimes heartrending work, often humiliating. The poor are so wonderful in their attitude to one another, and to all their difficulties and troubles. But if I once begin to talk about my South London folk, I shall never stop. Some day you will perhaps let me tell you of their hard fight with life, and of their splendid courage."
"You must let me help you, and them," she answered impulsively; "and thank you again ten thousand times, for all you have done for my little Baba."
The short, sharp illness which had brought Cicely flying down from town at a moment's notice, had safely run its course, and Baba was now enjoying a convalescence, in which she was petted and spoilt to her heart's content, petted to an extent that might have done harm to a less sweet and wholesome character. But the love that had wrapped the child round from her first hours of life, had only made her sunny sweetness of nature more sweet and sunny, and she was a very captivating patient. Mrs. Nairne vied with Cicely and Christina in, as she phrased it, "cosseting" up the precious little dear, and the village folk who had learnt to love the small girl in her red cloak, with her dainty face and gracious manners, showered gifts and enquiries upon the invalid. Very quaint presents found their way to Baba's bedside. A plump young chicken from good Mrs. Smithers, whose poultry yard had caused the child the keenest delight; eggs from Widow Jones, who cherished a few rakish fowls in her strip of back garden; girdle cakes, most fearsome for digestive purposes, from Mrs. Madden, the blacksmith's wife, whilst the blacksmith himself brought a horse shoe, polished to the brightness of a silver mirror, for the little lady who had loved to stand beside the flaming forge, watching the sparks fly up, as his huge hammer struck the anvil. Children came shyly with bunches of the berries and coloured leaves that still hung in the hedges, and a very ancient dame whose garden boasted of two equally ancient apple-trees, proudly toddled up to Mrs. Nairne's door with the largest and rosiest of her apples, for the "pretty little lady."