“Your aunt Olive’s just telephoned me she’s in a little trouble to-night.”
“Yes, sir,” Dan repeated. His aunt Olive, his father’s widowed sister-in-law, was often in a little trouble of one kind or another, and the Oliphant family had learned to expect a call for help when she telephoned to them. “Yes, sir. Does she want me?”
“Guess she does,” his father said. “Both the children took sick at the same time yesterday morning, she says. Mabel seems to be getting along all right, but Charlie’s in a high fever. You see there’s an epidemic of la grippe all over town—that’s what’s the matter with ’em, the doctor thinks; but so many people have got it she can’t find a nurse to save her life. Says she’s hunted high and low and there simply isn’t one to be had, and it seems Charlie’s delirious; and he’s strong, for fourteen; it’s hard to keep him in bed. I offered to go myself, but she said she’d heard you were back in town, so she wondered if you wouldn’t come over and sit up with him just a night or so until she——”
“You tell her I’ll be right there.” Dan had thrown off his dressing-gown and was in a chair, drawing on a shoe. “Tell her——”
“I told her so. You needn’t break your neck getting over there, Dan. I don’t think there’s any particular hurry. She just said——”
“I know, sir. She gets scared about Charlie mighty easy; but still I might as well move along, I guess,” Dan said, and continued the hurried resumption of his clothes.
His father stood watching him, and seemed to be a little troubled, showing a tendency toward apologetic embarrassment. “Oh—ah, Dan——” he said, and paused.
“Yes, sir?”
“I—ah—we—don’t want you to think——”
“Think what, sir?”