ad been
happily on their way to meet the husband who had been in South America
for a year. Larry had made friends with her on the train and played with
the babies who reminded him of his small cousins, Eric and Hester, Doctor
Philip's children.
A third case he went into more fully, that of a young woman--just a mere
girl in appearance though she wore a wedding ring--who had received a
terrible blow on the base of her brain which had driven out memory
entirely. She did not know who she was, where she was going, or whence
she had come. Her physical injuries, otherwise, were not serious, a
broken arm and some bad bruises, nothing but what she would easily
recover from in a short time; but, for all her effort, the past remained
as something on the other side of a strange, blank wall.
"She tries pitifully hard to remember, and is so sweet and brave we are
all devoted to her. I always stop and talk to her when I go by her. She
seems to cling to me, rather, as if I could help her get things back.
Lord knows I wish I could. She is too dainty and fragile a morsel of
humanity to be left to fight such a thing alone. She is a regular little
Dresden shepherdess, with the tiniest feet and hands and the yellowest
hair and bluest eyes I ever saw. Her husband must be about crazy, poor
chap, not hearing from her. I suppose he will be turning up soon to claim
her. I hope so. I don't know what will become of her if he does not.
"It is late and I must turn in. I don't know when I shall get home. I
don't flatter myself Dunbury will miss me much when it has you. Give
everybody my love and tell Tony I am awfully sorry I couldn't get to
commencement. I guess maybe she is glad enough to have me alive not to
mind much. I'm some glad to be alive myself."
The letter ended with affectionate greetings to the older doctor from his
nephew and junior assistant. With it came another epistle from the same
city from an old doctor friend who had watched Philip Holiday, himself,
grow up, and had immediately set his eye on the younger Holiday, when he
had discovered the relationship.
"You have a lad to be proud of in that Larry of yours," he wrote. "He is
on the job early and late, no smart Alecness, no shirking, no fool
questions, just there on the spot when you want him with cool head,
steady nerves and a hand as gentle as a woman's. I like his quality,
Phil. Quality shows up at a time like this. He is true Holiday, through
and through, and you ca
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