Part 32 (1/2)
”If that's true, old Lorry,” said he slowly, ”I'm sorrier than I can tell you.”
”Then--_come along_!” Lorimer looked waked up at last. He laid a persuasive hand on Richard's arm.
There was a moment of tensity. Then:
”If I should do it,” said Richard, regarding steadily a dog in the road some hundred yards ahead, ”would you feel any respect whatever for me?”
”Dead loads of it, I a.s.sure you.”
”Sure of that?”
”Why not?”
”Be honest. Would you?”
”You promised me first,” said Lorimer.
”I know I did. Such idle promises to play don't count when real life asks for work--it's no good reminding me of that promise. Answer me straight, now, Lorry--on your honour. If I should give in and go with you, you'd rejoice for a little, perhaps. Then, some day, when you and I were lying on deck, you'd look at me and think of me--against your will--I don't say it wouldn't be against your will--you'd think of me as a quitter. And you wouldn't like me quite as well as you do now. Eh? Be honest.”
Lorimer was silent for a minute. Then, to Richard's surprise, he gave an a.s.senting grunt, and followed it up with a reluctant, ”Hang it all, I suppose you're right. But I'm badly disappointed, just the same. We'll let that go.”
And let it go they did, parting, when they reached town, with the friendliest of grips, and a new, if not wholly comprehended, interest between them. As for Richard, he felt, somehow, as if he had nailed his flag to the mast!
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE MORNING
”By George, Carson, what do you think's happened now?”
Richard Kendrick had come into the store's little office like a thunderbolt.
”Well, Mr. Kendrick?”
”Benson's down with typhoid. Came back with it from the trip to Chicago.
What do you think of that?”
”I thought he was looking a little seedy before he went. Well, well, that's too bad. Right in the May trade, too. Is he pretty sick?”
”So the doctor says. He's been keeping up on that trip when he ought to have been in bed. He's in bed now, all right. I took him in with a nurse to the City Hospital on the 10:40 Limited; stretcher in the baggage-car.”
”Don't see where he got typhoid around here at this time of year,” mused Carson.
”n.o.body sees, but that doesn't matter. He has it, and it's up to us to pull him through--and to get along without him.”
They sat down to talk it over. While they were at it the telephone came into the discussion with a summons of Richard to a long-distance connection. To his amazement, when communication was established between himself and his distant interlocutor, clear and vibrant came to him over the wire a voice he had dreamed of but had not heard for four months:
”Mr. Kendrick?”
”Yes. Is it--it isn't--”