And that same year did Dr. DeLancey lose yet another friend that was a patient—a patient that was a friend. It was the violet-eyed widow of Jimmy Blair. And all night long, from gray dusk until crimson dawn, Dr. DeLancey had sat in the darkened parlor of the warm little house of red brick; he had sat in a rocking chair, and on either old knee he had held a sob-wracked, grief-torn, motherless girl, the one herself almost old enough to be a mother. And again he had cried. Some doctors may lose through oft-recurrence visualized their susceptibility to suffering; but Dr. DeLancey was not of them. And when he stumbled on stiffened legs out of the darkened parlor and into the incongruous mellow radiance of the spring sunshine, his eyes were still wet, and he didn't care who knew it.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER TEN.
TWO BOYS AND A DOCTOR.
Young Jack Schuyler and young Blake, a week later, went to see the doctor in his office. He looked up from his paper.
"Well?" he said.
Tom Blake cleared his throat.
"We wanted to ask you, Doctor," he began, "if—"
"Eh," assisted Jack Schuyler; "that is, we wanted to know—"
"—you see, that is—I—"