David Lockwin--The People's Idol Part 3

"Davy is very sick," she says, with a white face.

"What! My boy!! When was he taken? Is it diphtheria? What has the doctor said? Why wasn't I called? Where is he? Here, Davy, here's papa. Here's papa! Old boy! Old fel'! Oh, G.o.d, I'm so scared!"

All this as Lockwin goes up the stairs.

It is a wheezing little voice that replies; "S-u-h-p-e-s-o-J! What's that, papa?"

"Does that hurt, Davy? There? or there?"

"That's 'Josephus,' papa, on your big book, that I'll have some day--it I live. If I live I'll have all your books!"

CHAPTER V

DR. FLODDIN'S PATIENT

If there be one thing of which great Chicago stands in fear, it is that King Herod of the latter day, diphtheria.

This terror of the people is absolute, ignorant, and therefore supine.

The cattle have a scourge, but the loss of money makes men active.

When the rinderpest appears, governors issue proclamations. When horses show the glanders, quarantine is established. But when a father's flock is cut off, it is done before he can move, and other fathers will not or cannot interpose for their own protection.

All the other fathers do is to discount the worst--to dread the unseen sword which is suspended over all heads.

When David Lockwin heard that one of his tenants had a child dead with the contagion, the popular idol strove to recall his movements. Had he been in the sick-room? Had Davy been in that region? The thought which had finally alarmed Lockwin was the recollection that he had stopped with Davy in the grocery beneath the apartments of the dying child.

That was nine days before. Why is Dr. Tarpion absent? What a good fortune, however, that Dr. Floddin can be given charge. And if the disease be diphtheria, whisky will alleviate and possibly cure the patient. It is a hobby with Lockwin.

Dr. Floddin has come rather oddly by this practice. Who he is, no other regular doctor knows. But Dr. Floddin has an honest face, and keeps a little drug store on State street below Eighteenth. He usually charges fifty cents a visit, which is all he believes his services to be worth. This piece of quackery would ruin his name with Lockwin, were it known to him, or had Dr. Tarpion been consulted.

The regular fee is two dollars.

The poor come daily to Dr. Floddin's, and his fame is often in their mouths.

Why is Davy white and beautiful? Why is he gentle and so marvelously intelligent?

A year back, when his tonsils swelled, Dr. Tarpion said they must be cut out. The house-keeper said it was the worst possible thing to do.

The cook said it should never be done. The peddling huckster's son said Dr. Floddin didn't believe in it.

Then Davy would wake in the night. "I tan't breathe," he would complain.

"Yes, you can, Davy. Papa's here. Lie down, Davy. Here's a drink."

And in the morning all would be well. Davy would be in the library preparing for a great article.

The tribe on the other street, back, played ball from morning until night. The toddler of the lot was no bigger than Davy. Every face was as round and red as a Spitzbergen apple.

Last summer Lockwin and Davy went for a ball and bat, the people along the cross-street as usual admiring the boy. A blacksmith shop was on the way. A white bulldog was at the forge. He leaped away from his master, and was on the walk in an instant. With a dash he was on Davy, his heavy paw in the neat little pocket, bursting it and strewing the marbles and the written articles. Snap! went the mouth on the child's face, but it was merely a caprice.

"Bulldog never bite a child," observed the blacksmith.

But Lockwin had time only to take his baby between his legs. "Please call in your dog," he said to the blacksmith. "Please call him in.

Please call him in."

The dog was recalled. The child smiled, and yet he felt he had been ill served. The little hanging pocket testified that Lockwin must tarry in that hateful locality and pick up the treasure and doc.u.ments.

Trembling in every joint, he called at the house of an acquaintance.

"I dislike to keep you here," said the friend, "if you are afraid of the whooping-cough. We have it here in the house."

It seemed to David Lockwin that the city was an inhospitable place for childhood. The man and child traveled on and on. They reached the toy store. They stood before the soda fountain. They bought bat and ball.

It was too far. They rode by street car three miles in order to return the half mile. The child was asleep when they reached home.

"I drank sewer water," he observed to the housekeeper, speaking of the soda fountain, for sewer gas is a thing for Chicagoans to discuss with much learning.

So Davy and David went on the rear lot to play ball. The neighboring tribe offered their services for two-old-cat. The little white boy with the golden curls made a great hit.

"Bully for the codger!" quoth all the red-cheeked.

"We will cut off his curls and make him as healthy as those young ones," said Lockwin.

"You'll never do it!" said the housekeeper.

"Such as him do be too pretty for this life," said the cook, almost with tears in her eyes.

And just at this epoch of new hygiene Davy's eyes grew sore. "Take him to a specialist," said Dr. Tarpion.

The specialist made the eyes a little worse.

"Them's just such eyes as Dr. Floddin cured on my sister," said the peddling huckster's son at the kitchen door.

The housekeeper could say as much for a relative whom the cheap druggist had served.

"Can you cure my boy?" was Lockwin's question to Dr. Floddin.

"I think so," said the good man. He was gratified to be called to the relief of a person of so much consequence. Thereupon began a patient treatment of Davy's tonsils, his nose, and his eyes. As if Dr. Floddin knew all things, he foretold the day when the boy would reappear in his own countenance.

"Bless your little soul," the housekeeper would say, "I can't for the life of me laugh at you. But you do look so strange!"

"I thought," Lockwin would say, "I loved you for your beauty, Davy, but I guess it was for yourself."

"I guess you will love me better when I can play ball with the swear boys, won't you, papa?"

"Yes, you must get strong. We will cut off your curls then."

"And may I sit in your library and write articles if I will be very still and not get mud on me? They throwed mud on me once, papa."