The big Irishman got his number and called the cab.  The clerk came back with the ammonia and vanished with it into the back room.  Berry walked over to where Ted stood.

“See here, Mr. Holiday,” he said.  “I don’t often go out of my way to give college boys advice.  Advice is about the one thing in the world nobody wants.  But I’m going to give you a bit.  I like you and I liked your brother before you.  Here’s the advice.  Stick to the campus.  Don’t get mixed up with Cherry Street.  You wanted the chrysanthemums sent to Miss Hathaway, didn’t you?”

“I did.”  There was a flash in Ted’s blue eyes.  “Send ’em and send a dozen of your best roses to Miss Madeline Taylor, forty-nine Cherry and mind your business.  There is the cab.  Ready, Madeline?” As the girl appeared in the doorway with her coat and hat on.  “I’ll take you home.”

“Oh, no, indeed, it isn’t at all necessary,” protested Madeline.  “You have done quite enough as it is, Mr. Holiday.  You mustn’t bother.”  The speaker’s tone was cool, almost cold and very formal.  She did not know that Patrick Berry had heard that very different, fervid, “Ted!  Oh, Ted!” if indeed she knew it had ever passed her lips as she came reluctantly back to the world of realities.

Ted held the door open for her.  They passed out.  But a moment later when Berry peered out the window he saw the cab going in one direction and his best customer strolling off in the other and nodded his satisfaction.

Sauntering along his nonchalant course, Madeline Taylor already half forgotten, Ted Holiday came face to face with old Doctor Hendricks, a rosy cheeked, white bearded, twinkling eyed Santa Claus sort of person who had known his father and uncle and brother and had pulled himself through various minor itises and sprains.  Seeing the doctor reminded him of Madeline.

“Hello, Doc.  Just the man I wanted to see.  Want a job?”

“Got more jobs than I can tend to now, young man.  Anything the matter with you?  You look as tough as a two year old rooster.”

The old man’s small, kindly, shrewd eyes scanned the lad’s face as he spoke.

“Smoking less, sleeping more, nerves steadier, working harder, playing the devil lighter,” he gummed up silently with satisfaction.  “Good, he’ll come out a Holiday yet if we give him time.”

“I am tough,” Ted grinned back, all unconscious that he had been diagnosed in that flitting instant of time.  “Never felt better in my life.  Always agrees with me to be in training.”

The old doctor nodded.

“I know.  You young idiots will mind your coaches when you won’t your fathers and your doctors.  What about the job?”

“There’s a girl I know who works at Berry’s flower shop.  I am afraid she is sick though she won’t see a doctor.  She fainted away just now while I was in the store, keeled over into my arms, scared me half out of my wits.  I’m worried about her.  I wish you would go and see her.  She lives down on Cherry Street.”