Quincy's condition on the second day was so low, indeed, that Dr. Bannister told Tom if his friend had not made a will he had better do so. Tom's first thought was to send for Mr. Merry, but he decided that might lead to a charge of family influence, and he appealed to the doctor.
Dr. Bannister told Tom he was well acquainted with a young lawyer and that he would send him up to see Mr. Sawyer. Quincy was in such a condition when Lawyer Edward Everett Colbert made his first visit, that if he had been asked the name of the principal beneficiary he would probably have told the lawyer to let it go to the Devil. The second time that Mr. Colbert called, Quincy's physical will had resumed control and he had no need of any other.
When convalescing Quincy said to Tom, when the nurse was absent, “If you thought I was going to die, why didn't you send for Aunt Maude, and—and—you know whom I mean—Miss Dana?”
“I saw them every day, but you were too weak to see them, but if—they would have been summoned.”
“Tom, your head is so level that a plane couldn't make a shaving.”
Tom was obliged to be away daytimes, the buying for twenty stores requiring much travel.
Dr. Bannister and Lawyer Colbert were occasional visitors and Quincy received a manifest mental exhilaration from his intercourse with them. His sickness had led him to think about the future. Was he to live and die as the treasurer of a grocery company? Had he no higher ideal?
A story told by Jack and Ned, which they knew to be true, because they were the principal actors therein, led Quincy to give himself up to some mighty thinking.
The story was related one evening in the sitting-room when Tom was present.
“What I'm going to tell,” began Ned, “will include much more than I saw or knew myself, but it all comes from authentic sources. I shall omit names, since they are unessential.