As Jim listened to the music and watched the dainty steps of the little street dancers, he felt genuinely happy. The scene pleased him; it chased the wistfulness from his face, and he felt loth to continue his walk homewards. He was interested. These people around him were his people now; these people were his patients. Poor they were--starving, some of them--and he was their doctor. Had matters fallen out otherwise, it would have been his destiny to attend a very different class of patient. He would, in all probability, have assisted his grandfather--have ridden a horse, worn the best of clothes, and eaten and drunk "like a lord." He would have hunted and shot, and lived the life of a country gentleman, with just enough work to do to prevent himself from experiencing ennui. But instead of that he was fighting for an existence in Mount Street--among the poorest of the poor. No hunting, no shooting, no old port; it was grim fighting in Mount Street--hard work and a hard life--hardly earned money and money hard to get, even when he had earned it.
Still, he reflected, he lived. It was life--he lived strenuously. He was working in the heart of the greatest city in the world; he was living a man's life. Wasn't this, after all, better than lolling round a ready-made practice? Of course, that was good work, useful work--but this work in Mount Street was on a different plane. It was sheer fighting, and Jim, being a "scrapper" by nature, was filled with a feeling of fierce joy. He knew that he had played the fool, and that this was the penalty. But it was a penalty of a mixed kind, for it was a test which he relished. It was a test which would have knocked out a weak man, but Jim felt that he was getting a firmer foothold every day he trod the grimy pavement leading to his surgery.
Presently the little girls stopped--panting--and the organ-grinder dropped his handle. It was time he moved on.
So it was over, and Jim found himself feeling sorry. The other onlookers strolled away, and Jim was turning down the by-street, when he felt a touch on his arm, and looked round to find Dora Maybury by his side.
CHAPTER XVII.
IN THE CRESCENT.
This was the first time Jim had met Dora all by herself without the stronghold--No. 9, to wit. And there he had found few opportunities to say anything to her that was not formal and commonplace; indeed, their intercourse, with watching eyes and listening ears about them, had been (to Jim, at any rate) of a gallingly circumscribed character.
It is poor satisfaction, when the heart is hungry, to look into the eyes one loves, and remark that it is colder than it was yesterday; your lover is kept on conversation's shortest commons when, though burning to say a thousand tender things to the one girl he holds most precious, he has, perforce, to hazard a remark to the effect that there may be rain before morning.
Thus it was with Jim. He often saw Dora, but seldom spoke with her. There was that evening when she drew the course of the Rhine under his tutelage--but that was a memory by itself--a verdant oasis in the desert of verbal starvation!
It may be easily imagined, therefore, how fast beat Jim's heart when he found himself absolutely alone--and unwatched--with Dora Maybury.