This much was to be counted on the credit side, the Little Red
Doctor said. On the debit side--well, to me was deputed the unwelcome
task of conveying the solemn, and, as it were, official protest and
warning of Our Square. Of course I did it at the worst possible moment.
It was early one morning, when Mayme, on her bench, was looking a little
hollow-eyed and disillusioned. I essayed the light and jocular approach
to the subject:
"Well, Mayme; how is the ardent swain?"
She turned to me with the old flash in her big, shadowed eyes: "Did you
say swain or swine, Dominie?"
"Ah!" said I. "Has he changed his role?"
"He's given himself away, if that's what you mean."
"I thought that would come."
"He--he wanted me to take a trip to Boston with him."
I considered this bit of information, which was not as surprising or
unexpected as Mayme appeared to deem it. "Have you told the Little
Red Doctor?"
"Doc'd kill him," said Mayme simply.
"What better reason for telling?"
"Oh, the poor kid: he don't know any better."
"Doesn't he? In any case I trust that you know better, after this, than
to have anything more to do with him."
"Yep. I've cut him out," replied Mayme listlessly. "I figured you and
Doc were right, Dominie. It's no good, his kind of game. Not for girls
like me." She looked up at me with limpid eyes, in which there was
courage and determination and suffering.
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