Indeed her joy in them was too obvious to require any words. Queed decided to say nothing about the mitts.
"I"m glad that they please you," said he, pulling himself together for the ordeal of the call. "How are you getting along up here? Very well, I trust?"
"Fine. It"s so quiet and nice.... And I don"t mind about graduating a bit any more. Isn"t that funny?"
"You must hurry up and get well and return to the dining-room again, F--F--Fifi--, and to the algebra lessons--"
"Don"t," said Fifi. "I can"t bear it."
But she whisked at her eyes with a tiny dab of a handkerchief, and when she looked at him she was smiling, quite clear and happy.
"Have you missed me since I stopped coming?"
"Missed you?" he echoed, exactly as he had done before.
But this time Fifi said, shamelessly, "I"ll bet you have!--Haven"t you?"
Come, Mr. Queed, be honest. You are supposed to have the scientist"s pa.s.sion for veracity. You mercilessly demand the truth from others. Now take some of your own medicine. Stand out like a man. Have you or have you not missed this girl since she stopped coming?
"Yes," said the little Doctor, rather hollowly, "I ... have missed you."
Fifi"s smile became simply brazen. "Do you know what, Mr. Queed? You like me _lots_ more than you will say you do."
The young man averted his eyes. But for some time there had been in his mind the subtle consciousness of something left undone, an occasion which he had failed to meet with the final word of justice. Since he had been in the room, a vague, unwelcome resolve had been forming in his mind, and at Fifi"s bold words, it hardened into final shape. He drew a deep breath.
"You referred to me as your friend once, F--Fifi. And I said that I was not."
"I know."
"I was--mistaken"--so he drained his medicine to the dregs. "I ... am your friend."
Now the child"s smile was the eternal motherly. "Lor", Mr. Queed, I knew it all the time."
Queed looked at the floor. The sight of Fifi affected him most curiously to-day. He felt strangely ill at ease with her, only the more so because she was so amazingly at home with him. She wore her reddish-brown hair not rounded up in front as of old, but parted smoothly in the middle, and this only emphasized the almost saintly purity of her wasted little face. Her buoyant serenity puzzled and disconcerted him.
Meantime Fifi was examining Queed carefully. "You"ve been doing something to yourself, Mr. Queed! What is it? Why, you look ten times better than even four weeks ago!"
"I think," he said drearily, "it must be Klinker"s Exercises. I give them," broke from him, "_one hour and twenty minutes a day!_"
But he pulled himself together, conscientiously determined to take the cheery view with Fifi.
"It is an extraordinary thing, but I am feeling better, physically and mentally, than I ever felt before, and this though I never had a really sick day in my life. It must be the exercises, for that is the only change I have made in my habits. Yet I never supposed that exercise had any such practical value as that. However," he went on slowly, "I am beginning to believe that there are several things in this world that I do not understand."
Here, indeed, was a most humiliating, an epoch-making, confession to come from the little Doctor. It was accompanied with a vague smile, intended to be cheering and just the thing for a sick-room. But the dominant note in this smile was bewildered and depressed helplessness, and at it the maternal instinct sprang full-grown in Fifi"s thin little bosom. A pa.s.sionate wish to mother the little Doctor tugged at her heart.
"You know what you need, Mr. Queed? Friends--lots of good friends--"
He winced as from a blow. "I a.s.sure you--"
"Yes--you--DO!" said Fifi, with surprising emphasis for so weak a little voice. "You need first a good girl friend, one lots older and better than me--one just like Sharlee. O if only you and she _would_ be friends!--she"d be the very best in the world! And then you need men friends, plenty of them, and to go around with them, and everything. You ought to like _men_ more, Mr. Queed! You ought to learn to _be_ like them, and--"
"Be like them!" he interrupted, "I am like them. Why," he conceded generously, "I am one of them."
Fifi dismissed this with a smile, but he immediately added: "Has it occurred to you that, apart from my greater concentration on my work, I am different from other men?"
"Why, Mr. Queed, you are no more like them than I am! You don"t do any of the things they do. You don"t--"
"Such as what? Now, Fifi, let us be definite as we go along. Suppose that it was my ambition to be, as you say, like other men. Just what things, in your opinion, should I do?"
"Well, smoke--that"s one thing that all men do. And fool around more with people--laugh and joke, and tell funny stories and all. And then you could take an interest in your appearance--your clothes, you know; and be interested in all sorts of things going on around you, like politics and baseball. And go to see girls and take them out sometimes, like to the theatre. Some men that are popular drink, but of course I don"t care for that."
Fifi, of course, had no idea that the little Doctor"s world had been shattered to its axis that morning by three minutes" talk from Colonel Cowles. Therefore, though conscious that there never was a man who did not get a certain pleasure from talking himself over, she was secretly surprised at the patience, even the interest, with which he listened to her. She would have been still more surprised to know that his wonderful memory was nailing down every word with machine-like accuracy.
She expounded her little thesis in considerable detail, and at the end he said:--
"As I"ve told you, Fifi, my first duty is toward my book--to give it to the cause of civilization at the earliest possible moment. Therefore, the whole question is one of time, rather than of deliberate personal inclination. At present I literally cannot afford to give time to matters which, while doubtless pleasant enough in their fashion--"
"That"s what you would have said about the exercise, two months ago. And now look, how it"s helped you! And then, Mr. Queed--are you happy?"
Surprised and a little amused, he replied: "Really, I"ve never stopped to think. I should say, though, that I was perfectly content."
Fifi laughed and coughed. "There"s a big difference--isn"t there? Why, it"s just like the exercise, Mr. Queed. Before you began it you were just _not sick_; now you are _very well_. That"s the difference between content and happiness. Now I," she ran on, "am very, very happy. I wake up in the mornings _so_ glad that I"m alive that sometimes I can hardly bear it, and all through the day it"s like something singing away inside of me! Are you like that?"
No, Mr. Queed must confess that he was not like that. Indeed, few looking at his face at this moment would ever have suspected him of it.
Fifi regarded him with a kind of wistful sadness, but he missed the glance, being engaged in consulting his great watch; after which he sprang noisily to his feet, horrified at himself.
"Good heavens--it"s ten minutes past five! I must go immediately. Why, I"m twenty-five minutes behind My Schedule!"
Fifi smiled through her wistfulness. "Don"t ask me to be sorry, Mr.
Queed, because I don"t think I can. You see, I haven"t taken up a minute of your time for nearly a month, so I was ent.i.tled to some of it to-day."
You see! Hadn"t he figured it exactly right from the beginning? Once give a human being a moment of your time, as a special and extraordinary kindness, and before you can turn around there that being is claiming it wholesale as a matter-of-course right!
"It was so sweet of you to send me these flowers, and then to come and see me, too.... Do you know, it"s been the very best day I"ve had since I"ve been sick, and you"ve made it so!"
"It"s all right. Well, good-bye, Fifi."
Fifi held out both her tiny hands, and he received them because, in the sudden emergency, he could think of no way of avoiding them.
"You"ll remember what I said about friends, and _men_--won"t you, Mr.
Queed? Remember it begins with liking people, liking everybody. Then when you really like them you want to do things for them, and that is happiness."
He looked surprised at this definition of happiness, and then: "Oh--I see. That"s your religion, isn"t it?"
"No, it"s just common sense."
"I"ll remember. Well, Fifi, good-bye."
"Good-bye--and thank you for everything."