"I mean," he said, "what I'm a-tellin' yer. I wanter be a good boy. My pa, he drinks. He drinks like—" The word he used, in description, was not the sort of a word that should have issued from childish lips. "An' my big brother—he ain't like Pa, but he's a bum, too! I don't wanter be like they are—not if I kin help it! I wanter be th' sort of a guy King Arthur was, an' them knights of his'n. I wanter be like that there St. George feller, as killed dragons. I wanter do real things," unconsciously he was quoting from the gospel of Rose-Marie, "wi' my life! I wanter be a good husban' an' father—"
All at once the Young Doctor was laughing. It was not an unkind laugh—it gave Bennie heart to listen to it—but it was exceedingly mirthful. Bennie could not know that the idea of himself, as a husband and father, was sending this tall man into such spasms of merriment—he could not know that it was rather incongruous to picture his small grubby form in the shining armour of St. George or of King Arthur. But, being glad that the doctor was not angry, he smiled too—his strange, twisted little smile.
The Young Doctor stopped laughing almost as quickly as he had begun. With something of interest in his face he surveyed the little ragged boy.
"Where," he questioned after a moment, "did you learn all of that stuff about knights, and saints, and doing things with your life, and husbands and fathers? Who told you about it?"
Bennie hesitated a moment. Perhaps he was wondering who had given this stranger a right to pry into his inner shrine. Perhaps he was wondering if Rose-Marie would like an outsider to know just what she had told him. When he answered, his answer was evasive.
"A lady told me," he said. "A lady."
The Young Doctor was laughing again.
"And I suppose," he remarked, with an effort at solemnity, "that gentlemen don't pass ladies' names about between 'em—I suppose that you wouldn't tell me who this lady of yours may be, even though I'd like to meet her?"
Bennie's lips closed in a hard little line that quirked up at one end. He shook his head.
"I'd ruther not," he said very slowly. "Say—Where's th' Scout Club?"