"Smoking less, sleeping more, nerves steadier, working harder, playing the devil lighter," he gummed up silently with satisfaction. "Good, he'll come out a Holiday yet if we give him time."
"I am tough," Ted grinned back, all unconscious that he had been diagnosed in that flitting instant of time. "Never felt better in my life. Always agrees with me to be in training."
The old doctor nodded.
"I know. You young idiots will mind your coaches when you won't your fathers and your doctors. What about the job?"
"There's a girl I know who works at Berry's flower shop. I am afraid she is sick though she won't see a doctor. She fainted away just now while I was in the store, keeled over into my arms, scared me half out of my wits. I'm worried about her. I wish you would go and see her. She lives down on Cherry Street."
"H-m!" The doctor's eyes studied the boy's face again but with less complacency this time. Like Patrick Berry he thought a young Holiday would better stick to the campus, not run loose on Cherry Street.
"Know the girl well?" he queried.
Ted hesitated, flushed, looked unmistakably embarrassed.
"Yes, rather," he admitted. "I ran round with her quite a little the first of the summer. I got her the job at Berry's. Her grandfather, a pious old stick in the mud, turned her out of his house. She had to do something to earn her living. I hope she isn't going to be sick. It would be an awful mess. She can't have much saved up. Go and see her, will you, Doc? Forty-nine Cherry. Taylor is the name."
"H-m." The doctor made a note of these facts. "All right, I'll go. But you had better keep away from Cherry Street, young man. It is not the environment you belong in."