Fallen leaves, crisp as paper, crackled pleasantly under their feet; and through the haze that is October's veil glowed a reddish sun, vague as an opal. A footpath crawled like a serpent through the woods and they followed it, kicking up the leaves before them, pausing, darting, exclaiming. "I--Honest, Mr. Blaney, I--" "Eddie!" "Eddie, I--I never did feel so--I never was so--so--Aw, I can't say it." Tears sprang to her eyes. "Sure you never was. I never was, neither, before--before--" "Before what?" "Before I had to." "Had to?" "Yeh; both of them. Bleeding all the time. Didn't see nothing but red for 'leven months." "You!" "Yeh; three years ago. Looked like Arizona on a stretcher for me." "You--so big and strong and all!" He smiled at her and his teeth flashed. "Gad! little girl, if you got a right to be scared, whatta you think I had? I seen your card over at the clinic last night, and you 'ain't got no right to have that down-and-out look on you had this morning. If you think you got something to be scared at you looka my old card at the clinic some day; they keep it for show. You oughtta seen me the day I quit the shipping-room, right over at the Titanic, too, and then see whether you got something to be scared at." "You--you used to work there?" "Six years." "I--I ain't scared no more, Eddie; honest, I ain't!" "Gee! I should say not! They ain't even sending you up to the farm." "No, no! They're going to get me a job. A regular outdoor, on-the-level kind of a job. A grand old doc, with whiskers! I ain't a regular one, Eddie; just the bottom of one lung don't make a regular one." "Well, I guess not, poor little missy. Well, I guess not." "Three months, he said, Eddie. Three months of right living like this, and air and all, and I'll be as round as a peach, he said. Said it hisself, without me asking--that's how scared I was. Round as a peach!" "You can't beat that gang over there at the clinic, little missy. They took me out of the department when all the spring-water I knew about ran out of a keg. Even when they got me out on the farm--a grown-up guy like me--for a week I thought the crow in the rooster was a sidewalk faker. You can't beat that, little missy." "He's a grand old man, with whiskers, that's going to get me the job. Then in three months I--" "Three months nothing! That gang won't let you slip back after the three months. They took a extra shine to me because I did the prize-pupil stunt; but they won't let anybody slip back if they give 'em half a chance. When they got me sound again, did they ship me back to the shipping department in the subbasement? Not muchy! Looka me now, little missy! Clerk in their biggest display; in three months a raise to ninety dollars. Can you beat it? Ninety dollars would send all the shipping-clerks of the world off in a faint." "Gee! it--it's swell!" "And--" "Look! Look!"