“This is my beat; from here to the next cross street and back again. I’m here every morning from seven to one. We—we—Dick, I mean, will be glad to see you.” The way he smiled as he looked at Cordie’s deep colored, dimpled cheeks, her frank blue eyes, her crinkly hair, said plainer than words: “Dick won’t be the only one who will be glad to see you.”
“Lucile,” implored Cordie, “I wish you’d do me a favor. I haven’t a lump of sugar for poor old Dick. I can’t leave him this way. I—I never have. Won’t you please talk to this—this policeman until I can go to the restaurant on the corner and get some?”
“It’s all right, Miss—Miss——”
“Cordie,” prompted the girl.
“It’s all right, Cordie,” Patrick O’Hara grinned, “I’ll not run away. Duty calls me, though. I must ride up a block and back again. I—I’ll make it snappy. Be back before you are.”
Touching Dick with his spurless heel and patting him gently on the neck, he went trotting away.
Five minutes later, the lump of sugar ceremony having been performed to the complete satisfaction of both Dick and Cordie, the girls hurried away to the scenes of their daily labors.
This little drama made a profound impression upon Lucile. For one thing, it convinced her that in spite of her expensive and stylish lingerie, Cordie was indeed a little country girl. “For,” Lucille told herself, “that horse, Dick, came from the country. All horses do. He’s been a pet of Cordie’s back there on the farm. His owner, perhaps her own father, has sold him to some city dealer. And because he is such a thorobred and such a fine up-standing beauty, he has been made a police horse. I don’t blame her for loving him. Anyone would. But it shows what a splendid, affectionate girl she is.
“I’m sort of glad,” she told herself a moment later, “that she’s gotten acquainted with that young officer, Patrick O’Hara. He seems such a nice sort of boy, and then you can never tell how soon you’re going to need a policeman as a friend; at least it seems so from what happened last night.”
She might have shuddered a little had she known how prophetic these thoughts were. As it was, she merely smiled as she recalled once more how her impetuous little companion had raced across the streets to throw her arms about the neck of a horse ridden by a strange policeman.