“How is it you are out here still? This is Thursday, isn’t it? We meant to have been half way home, to be in time for the matches.”
“I’m not going back this half, worse luck. They were mortally afraid these measles would make me get tender in the chest, like all the rest of us, so I’ve got nothing to do but be dragged about with Fordham after churches and picture galleries and mountains,” said Cecil, in a tone of infinite disgust. “I declare it made me half mad to look at the Lake of Lucerne, and recollect that we might have been in the eight.”
“Not this year.”
“No, but next.”
In this contemplation Cecil was silent, only fondling Chico, until Jock, instead of falling asleep again, said, “Evelyn, what does your doctor really think of the little chap?”
Cecil screwed up his face as if he had rather not be asked.
“Never you think about it,” he said. “Doctors always croak. He’ll be all right again soon.”
“If I was sure,” sighed Jock; “but you know he has always been such a religious little beggar. It’s a horrid bad sign.”
“Like my brother Walter,” said Cecil gravely. “Now, Duke can be ever so snappish and peevish; I’m not half so much afraid for him.”
“You never heard anything like the little fellow that night,” said Jock, and therewith he gave his friend by far the most connected account of the adventure that had yet been arrived at. He even spoke of the resolution to which he had been brought, and in a tone of awe described how he had pledged himself for the future.