“I tell you his name is Jack.”
“What of it? He’ll be just as hard on the socks. I hate to think of a girl like you, tied down somewhere—”
“There’s a lot in what you say,” Paula Wendell admitted.
“I’ve only scratched the surface,” Eden assured her.
The girl steered her car off the road through an open gate. Eden saw a huge, rambling ranch house surrounded by a group of tiny cottages. “Here we are at Doctor Whitcomb’s,” remarked Paula Wendell. “Wonderful person, the doctor. I want you two to meet.”
She led the way through a screen door into a large living-room, not so beautifully furnished as Madden’s, but bespeaking even greater comfort. A gray-haired woman was rocking contentedly near a window. Her face was kindly, her eyes calm and comforting. “Hello, Doctor,” said the girl. “I’ve brought some one to call on you.”
The woman rose, and her smile seemed to fill the room. “Hello, young man,” she said, and took Bob Eden’s hand.
“You—you’re the doctor,” he stammered.
“Sure am,” the woman replied. “But you don’t need me. You’re all right.”
“So are you,” he answered. “I can see that.”
“Fifty-five years old,” returned the doctor, “but I can still get a kick out of that kind of talk from a nice young man. Sit down. The place is yours. Where are you staying?”
“I’m down the road, at Madden’s.”
“Oh yes—I heard he was here. Not much of a neighbor, this P.J. Madden. I’ve called on him occasionally, but
