“I suppose it ain’t no better this morning, Doc?” he had said, humbly, after a new week of bed and weights.
“Your right leg’s going to be shorter. That’s all.”
“Oh, gosh! I’ve been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain’t I a son-of-a-gun?”
You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time’s due course he had walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length, after all, and in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had missed the child’s conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected thing, and he in the late end of his twenties.
“He’ll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent,” said Barker. “Then he’ll come back on a freight and begin over again.”
III
A Transaction in Boot-Blacking
