"I have just arrived home on leave," he said briefly. "I find my father desperately ill in our house at the Cove. You have a very fast and able cruiser. Would you care to put her at my disposal so that I may take my father to Vancouver? I think that is his only chance."
Gower had risen. He was not an imposing man. At his first glimpse of MacRae's face, the pink-patched eye, the uniform, he flushed slightly,—recalling that afternoon.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You'd be welcome to the Arrow if she were here. But I sent her to Nanaimo an hour after she landed us. Are you Donald MacRae's boy?"
"Yes," MacRae said. "Thank you. That's all."
He had said his say and got his answer. He turned to go. Betty Gower put a detaining hand on his arm.
"Listen," she put in eagerly. "Is there anything any of us could do to help? Nursing or—or anything?"
MacRae shook his head.
"There is a girl with him," he answered. "Nothing but skilled medical aid would help him at this stage. He has the flu, and the fever is burning his life out."
"The flu, did you say?" The young man with the long cigarette lost his bored air. "Hang it, it isn't very sporting, is it, to expose us—these ladies—to the infection? I'll say it isn't."