Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/38

14 would nod to you or hail you from the veranda, and you would come up—and—and then we'd have to see what came after that."

The doctor felt himself blushing to the roots of his hair. He stirred his spoon around in the empty cup and said:

"Of course it is not very often that I have time to take a walk. The other day, to be sure, I—why, yes, come to think of it, I did pass rather near The Range." At last he gathered courage to look up, and saw to his relief that the boy was gazing at him quite innocently. He continued in a businesslike tone:

"If it can't be done in any other way, why then I shall accept your— Of course, a talk on the veranda will not do very much good. Without a thorough examination, you understand, nothing can really be determined."

"That goes without saying, Doctor. We hope, you know, that father will even make up his mind to that, too, after a while. But if you'd only just see him once, first! You've got so much experience. Perhaps you could make it possible, Doctor, one of these days after your office-hours— Of course, we’d like it best if you could even do it to-day—"

"To-day," Graesler repeated to himself. "This very day I could see her again! How wonderful!" But he kept silence, turned the pages of his notebook, shook his head dubiously, seemed to be encountering insurmountable difficulties—until at last he picked up a pencil of a sudden, resolutely ran a line through something that was not there at all, and, as that word happened to be the first to occur to him, wrote down on the next page, "Sabine." He announced his decision pleasantly, but a little coolly.

"Very well, then. Let us say, this evening between half past five and six. Is that all right?"

"Oh, Doctor—"

Graesler rose, checked the boy's outburst of thanks, asked to be remembered kindly to his mother and sister, and at parting shook hands with him. Then he left the balcony and entered his room, and watched at the window as young Schleheim came out of the vestibule with his bicycle, pulled his cap well down on his head, swung himself nimbly and skilfully on, and had soon vanished around the next corner. "If I were only ten years younger," the doctor thought to himself, "I might be justified in imagining that the whole thing is nothing but a pretext of Fräulein Sabine's to arrange to see me again." And he sighed softly.