afraid of
the whooping-cough. We have it here in the house."

It seemed to David Lockwin that the city was an inhospitable place for
childhood. The man and child traveled on and on. They reached the toy
store. They stood before the soda fountain. They bought bat and ball.

It was too far. They rode by street car three miles in order to return
the half mile. The child was asleep when they reached home.

"I drank sewer water," he observed to the housekeeper, speaking of the
soda fountain, for sewer gas is a thing for Chicagoans to discuss with
much learning.

So Davy and David went on the rear lot to play ball. The neighboring
tribe offered their services for two-old-cat. The little white boy
with the golden curls made a great hit.

"Bully for the codger!" quoth all the red-cheeked.

"We will cut off his curls and make him as healthy as those young
ones," said Lockwin.

"You'll never do it!" said the housekeeper.

"Such as him do be too pretty for this life," said the cook, almost
with tears in her eyes.

And just at this epoch of new hygiene Davy's eyes grew sore. "Take him
to a specialist," said Dr. Tarpion.

The specialist made the eyes a little worse.

"Them's just such eyes as Dr. Floddin cured on my sister," said the
peddling huckster's son at the kitchen door.

The housekeeper could say as much for a relative whom the cheap
druggist had served.

"Can you cure my boy?" was Lockwin's question to Dr. Floddin.

"I think so," said the good man. He was gratified to be called to the
relief of a person of so much consequence. Thereupon began a patient
treatment of Davy's tonsils, his nose, and his eyes. As if Dr. Floddin
knew all things, he foretold the day when the boy would reappear in his
own countenance.

"Bless your little soul," the housekeeper would say, "I can't for the
life of me laugh at you. But you do look so strange!"

"I thought," Lockwin would say, "I loved you for your beauty, Davy, but
I guess it was for yourself."

"I guess you will love me better when I can play ball with the swear
boys, won't you, papa?"

"Yes, you must get strong. We will cut off your curls then."

"And may I sit in your library and write articles if I will be very
still and not get mud on me? They throwed mud on me once, papa."

Poor little swollen-eyed Davy! Yet richer than almost any other living
thing in Chicago. None knew him but to love him. "I didn't think it
would hit him," said even