"Don't I, please?" said David, very earnestly. Then he wanted to know if he could not be born in Indiana. That is where Mitch Horrigan had been born, and he was always bragging about it. But the Doctor didn't seem to be in a conversational humor. He made no reply to David's request, and that vexed the little boy. He suddenly let go of the man's hand and stood still. Then the Doctor stopped, too, and asked what was wrong. It was now that David closed his fist upon his thumbs and frowned savagely. "I am not," he declared; "I am not neither a girl, am I?" The reply of his big friend was consoling, but not satisfying, and it was some time before the man again felt the little, soft fist in his hand and saw the little boy looking wistfully up into his face. "If only I had a few of them, Fav-ver Doctor," said David, "only just a few little warts!" CHAPTER VIII THE GONE-AWAY LADY Proud business for David! Sitting on the edge of the seat of the buggy, he was holding the reins very tight. One must always do that if he does not want the horse to kick and run away. Not knowing that the horse was tied to the hitching-post, David was fulfilling his mission with ceremony, and when Dr. Redfield appeared from the door of a drug shop across the way, the little boy called to him gayly:-- "He didn't run away, did he? I held him all right, didn't I?" Dr. Redfield had been absent long enough to use the telephone in notifying Miss Eastman, whom David knew only by the sweeter name of Mother, that her little boy had been waylaid and would probably not be home to luncheon. She was not permitted to know that the pretty rogue had run away, but the man himself strongly suspected the truth. For some time, though, he charitably refrained from speaking of the matter. In fact, three important events in David's life took place before the painful subject was broached. To eat at the Doctor's table, and wholly without the assistance of a high chair--that was one of the events; another was a hair-cut, and the third--Everybody, salute! David is in trouvers! He and his big friend both admired them immensely, and it was in the little shabby, out-at-the-elbow doctor's office that David had been helped to put them on. After he had strutted for a while his Fav-ver said to him:-- "What fun, David; what fun you must have had in running away!" "Oh," the little boy replied, "I didn't go far. I got scart and hurried back to Mother." The Doctor looked wryly at his guest. He knew David had not gone home after running away. "Did you see Mother after you went back?" he asked. "No, I didn't see her." "But you are sure you went back?" "It didn't _feel_ back," said David. "You couldn't have been mistaken about going back?" "No." "In what part of town were you when I found you on the fence-post?" "Home," said David. "Why were you crying?" "I was feeling bad." "And why was that?" "I was scart." "Of what?" "Everything was so mixed up."