Part 44

“Nothing so mild. Garbage inspection.”

“What!” Louise Ennis closed her eyes in expectation of a qualm of disgust. The qualm didn’t materialize. “What’s the matter with me?” she asked in naïve and suppressed chagrin. “I ought to feel—well, nauseated.”

“Nonsense! Your nerves and stomach have found their poise. That’s all.”

“But what do I know about garbage?”

“You know it when you see it, don’t you? Now, listen. There has been a strike of the city teamsters. Dr. Merritt, the Health Officer, wants volunteers to inspect the city and report on where conditions are bad from day to day. You’ve got intelligence. You can outwalk nine men out of ten. And you can be of real service to the city. Besides, it’s doctor’s orders.”

The story of Louise Ennis’s part in the great garbage strike, and of her subsequent door-to-door canvass of housing conditions, has no place in this account. After the start, Dr. Strong saw little of her; but he heard much from Mrs. Clyde, who continued her frequent visits to the Ennis household; not so much, as she frankly admitted, for the purpose of furnishing bulletins to Dr. Strong, as because of her own growing interest in and affection for the girl. And, as time went on, Strong noticed that, on the occasions when he chanced to meet his patient on the street, she was usually accompanied by one or another of the presentable young men of the community, a fact which the physician observed with professional approval rather than personal gratification.

“It isn’t her health alone,” said Mrs. Clyde, when they were discussing her, one warm day in the ensuing summer. “These six months seem to have made a new person of her. Trust the children to find out character. Bettykins wants to spend half her time with Cousin Lou.”

“You’ve surely worked a transformation, Strong,” said Clyde. “But, of course, the raw material was there. You couldn’t do much for the average homely woman.”

“The average woman isn’t homely,” said Mrs. Clyde. “She’s got good looks either spoiled or undeveloped.”

“Perfectly true,” confirmed Dr. Strong. “Any young woman whose face isn’t actually malformed can find her place in the eternal scheme of beauty if she tries. Nature works toward beauty in all matters of sex. Where beauty doesn’t exist it is merely an error in Nature’s game.”

“Then the world is pretty full of errors,” said Mrs. Sharpless.

“Most of them aren’t Nature’s errors. They are the mistakes of the foolish human. Take almost any woman, not past the age of development, build up her figure to be supple and self-sustaining; give her a clear eye, quick-moving blood, fresh skin, and some interest in the game of life that shall keep mind and body alert—why, the radiant force of her abounding health would make itself felt in a blind asylum. And all this she can do for herself, with a little knowledge and a good deal of will.”

“But that isn’t exactly beauty, is it?” asked Clyde, puzzled.

“Isn’t it? In the soundest sense, I think it is. Anyway, put it this way: No woman who is wholly healthy, inside and out, can fail to be attractive.”

“I wish that painter-man could see Louise now, as an example,” said Grandma Sharpless.

“Oren Taylor?” said Mr. Clyde. “Why, he can. He goes East next week, and I’ll wire him to stop over.”

Oren Taylor arrived late on a warm afternoon. As he crossed the lawn, Louise Ennis was playing “catch” with Manny Clyde. Her figure swung and straightened with the lithe muscularity of a young animal. Her cheek was clear pink, deepening to the warmer color of the curved lips. The blue veins stood out a little against the warm, moist temples from which she brushed a vagrant lock of hair. Her eyes were wide and lustrous with the eager effort of the play, for the boy was throwing wide in purposeful delight over her swift gracefulness.

“Great Heavens!” exclaimed the artist, staring at her. “Who did that?”

“Strong did that,” explained Clyde; “as per specifications.”

“A triumph!” declared Taylor. “A work of art.”

“Oh, no,” said Dr. Strong; “a renewal of Nature.”

“In any case, a lady remade and better than new. My profound felicitations, Dr. Strong.” He walked over to the flushed and lovely athlete. “Miss Ennis,” he said abruptly, “I want your permission to stay over to-morrow and sketch you. I need you in my ‘Poet’s Cycle of the Months.’”

“How do you do, Mr. Taylor?” she returned demurely. “Of course you can sketch me, if it doesn’t interfere with my working hours.” A quick smile rippled across her face like sunlight across water. “The same subject?” she asked with mischievous nonchalance.

“No. Not even the same season,” he replied emphatically, coloring, as he bethought him of his “November, the withered mourner of glories dead and gone.”

“What part am I to play now?”

“Let Dr. Strong name it,” said Taylor with quick tact. “He has prepared the model.”

The girl turned to the physician, a little deeper tinge of color in her face.

“Referred to Swinburne,” said Strong lightly, and quoted:—