“Then he was ten years old when you were born. Could you call him a ‘friend of your father and mother’ when he was ten years old? Did you play with him when you were a boy?”
For a long time Andy Jerome was silent. Then he said slowly:
“I must tell you something about myself. I can recall almost nothing of my childhood before my twelfth birthday. And my earliest recollections are of Doctor Shonto. I remember him as about twenty-two or twenty-three years old. And, to me, he never was younger than that.”
“Why, I can’t understand you at all!” exclaimed the girl.
“It’s very difficult to understand,” he said in low tones. “But when I was about eight years old, they tell me, something happened to me. It seems that I got a crack on the noodle while playing and lost my memory. I remained in that condition from the age of eight until I was perhaps between eleven and twelve. It was Doctor Shonto, who had just been graduated from a medical college and was already making a big name for himself, who treated me and brought me out of my coma. But, strange to say, it left me with a weak heart. I have to take treatment for it right along, and the doctor tells me that, if I neglect this treatment, my old condition will come back, or I may suddenly drop dead. For all that, I’m fit as a fiddle and strong as an ox. It seems funny to think that I may bump off at any moment—hard to believe. But nobody ever doubts Doctor Shonto. However, he has assured me again and again that I have nothing whatever to worry about, so long as I take my medicine diligently. I guess I haven’t missed a day since he began his treatment.”
“Why, how strange!” was Charmian’s only comment.
“It is strange—mighty strange. Now and then I get a faint glimmering of something that took place before I was eight years of age, but it’s so hazy that it seems like it happened to some one else instead of me. And it seemed that, when I gradually regained my memory, I was being born all over again. I had the mind of a child of two or three, though I was over twelve years old. I remembered nothing of what had been taught me in the private school that they told me I had once attended. I had to begin my schooling at the very bottom again. Lord, how they made me cram! I studied night and day, and seemed eager enough to learn. They tell me that I have caught up because of my perpetual digging—that I now have the mentality of a normal man of my age. And so for the past year I have studied very little, and have been catching up on the physical end. I have lived in the open months at a time, and frequently Doctor Shonto has been with me. He likes it himself, and he likes to be with me. And I can tell you right here and now that I think Doctor Inman Shonto the greatest man alive!”
“I’ll bet you do,” said Charmian warmly. “But it strikes me as rather strange that you should never call him Doc, since you two are so close.”
“I guess I’d never think of calling him that,” said Andy reflectively. “No, that wouldn’t seem the proper thing to do.”
“What do you do when you’re at home, Mr. Jerome?”