"Right again," affirmed the doctor. "Single stalls are the thing; everybody sleeps better without assistance. Sooner have a few children around? Some fellows study better with kids in the house, and others again go wild if they hear one howl."
"I believe I'd get along just as well without them," said Harvey, laughing; "you see, I'll need to study very hard—and I don't believe they help one much."
"It's like studying in a monkeys' cage," asserted Dr. Wallis vigorously; "what I hate about little gaffers in a boarding-house is the way they always want to look at your watch," he enlarged solemnly, "and five times out of six they let it fall. It's fun for them, as the old fable says, but it's death to the frogs. And of course you want to get into a place where they have good cooking; it's pretty hard to do the higher mathematics on hash and onions—and lots o' students have lost their degrees through bad butter. I've known men whose whole professional life was tainted by the butter they got at college."
"But I'm not over particular about what I eat," began Harvey; "if the place is warm, and if they keep it——"
"That's all right enough," broke in the other, "but it makes a difference just the same. You've got the same kind of internal mechanism as other fellows, and you've got to reckon with it. Well, we'll see what we can do. I've got a place or two in mind now. I'll tell you about them later—we're almost at my patient's house. I say, you may as well come in—it'll be a little glimpse of life for you; and we can see more about this matter after we come out."
Another hundred yards brought them to their destination, a rather squalid looking cottage on a rather squalid looking street. Dr. Wallis knocked at the door, pushing it open and entering without tarrying for response. As Harvey followed with the older doctor a child's wailing fell upon his ears, emerging from the only other room the little house contained.
"Just wait here," said Dr. Wallis to the other two; "the child's in there—I'll be back in a minute."
He disappeared, Harvey and his friend seating themselves on a rude bench near the door. Both looked around for a minute at the pitiful bareness of the room; and the eyes of both settled down upon a tawdry doll that lay, forsaken and disconsolate, on the floor. Tawdry enough it was, and duly fractured in the head; but it redeemed the wretched room with the flavour of humanity, and the solitary sunbeam that had braved the grimy window played about the battered brow, and the vision of some child's wan face rose above the hapless bundle.
"He's a jewel," Dr. Horton said in a half whisper, "a jewel of the first water."
"Who?" asked Harvey.