“Then come along now to Doc Selters and get it filled.” “I don't want it filled. I want it pulled. I want to get it out and stamp on it!” “Well, he will pull it.” “He will _not_. He says it's got to be saved. He's killing the nerve--on the Spanish Inquisition principle. I'd go to the fifty cent yankers this minute if I didn't have a saw-off with Selters.” “A what?” “A saw-off. A professional exchange. He owes me two liver-attacks and a diffuse laryngitis; and the best he'll do,” cried the Little Red Doctor, dancing with rage and pain, “is to say that the worst of it is over. D----n his eyes!” Plainly, the Bonnie Lassie was right. The Little Red Doctor was in no state to meet vital issues. I went over to Dead-Men's-Shoes' place, and there beheld the brown-and-gold fairy skillfully sewing trouser buttons on waistcoats. She looked tired and pathetic, and when she saw me she jumped up and ran to me. “Oh, Mr. Dominie!” she cried. “Where is he?” I shook my head. Somehow I hadn't the heart to obtrude as unpoetic a _motif_ as a toothache upon that prospective romance. “I've worked and worked and worked,” she said, with a drooping mouth, “and he doesn't come. And Miss Willard won't tell me why. I'm sure something has happened to him. Has there?” “Why, no,” I said. “That is--er--certainly not!” “There has!” She set her hands on my shoulders and explored my face with her sweet, anxious eyes. “Tell me. You _must_ tell me! It was you who brought me here.” (Oh, the justice of womankind!) “Was it, indeed!” “Well, it is your fault that--that I came. You encouraged me.” She let her hands drop and her eyes darkened with reproach. “Won't you tell me if he is ill?” “He isn't ill. On honor.” Despite her workaday garb, she was instantly metamorphosed into the brown-and-gold fairy again. “Then, when is he coming?” “I don't know.” “You do! But you won't tell. You're playing with me, you and Miss Willard.” “Didn't you play with the Little Red Doctor? What about that clandestine message in the toe of the shoe?” “Oh!” She had the grace to blush (and a brown-and-gold fairy's blush is something to cherish in memory). But at once curiosity overbore shame. “Did you give him the shoes yourself? What did he say when he put them on?” Recalling the impassioned monosyllable which signalized the Little Red Doctor's original discovery of the hairpin, I replied truthfully enough: “I don't think that would interest you.” “Don't you? Then how did he look?” “Severe.” “I know! Oh, how well I know!” Her voice declined to a caressing murmur. “And all the time there's that twinkle of fun and sympathy underneath the frown. Oh, ever so deep underneath! It took me a long time to find it.” “And longer to forget it?” I suggested with malice. “I don't want to forget it,” retorted the fairy loftily. “I could if I chose. You're sure there isn't anything the matter with him?” “I never said there wasn't anything the matter with him. I said he wasn't ill.”