Juliet opened it, read the fateful message, and turned white as death.
"What is it?" asked the Doctor, much alarmed.
In answer, she offered him the note, her hand shaking pitifully. The
Doctor read it twice before he grasped the full meaning of it. "Well,
I'll be—" he said, half to himself.
Unable to stand, Juliet sat down upon the well-worn door-step and he sat down beside her. "It's all my fault," she said, solemnly. "Romie told me this morning that I wasn't a lady, and he wanted me to be like her. He said I was a tomboy, and I told him that if I was, he'd done it himself, and he got mad and went away, and now—"
Juliet burst into tears, but she had no handkerchief, so Doctor Jack gave her his.
"'Tears, idle tears,'" he quoted lightly. "I say, kid, don't take it so hard."
"I—I'm not a lady," she sobbed.
"You are," he assured her. "You're the finest little lady I know."
"Don't—don't," she sobbed. "Don't make fun of me. Romie said that you were—laughing at me—yesterday-because I was—a—a tomboy!"
"Kid," he said, softly, almost unmanned by a sudden tenderness quite foreign to his experience. "Oh, my dear little girl, won't you look at me?"