"Mr. Grimm!" she sobbed. "The best—the kindest—the—the—Oh, I don't see how we are going to bear it."
"Dear Mrs. Batholommey," answered Grimm. "Please don't be so overcome. I may outlive you all. Nevertheless, I am grateful to your husband for letting me hear my funeral eulogy in advance, and to you for——"
"Oh, how can you make light of it?" she sobbed. "Yes, dear, I'm coming. Good-bye, Mr. Grimm."
Like a confused and somewhat elderly hen she scuttled off in her husband's wake, while Peter Grimm stared after the two with a half-amused, half-perplexed smile.
"Of all the wall-eyed, semi-anthropoid congenital idiots," roared McPherson as the door closed behind them, "those two are——"
"You're mistaken, Andrew," contradicted Grimm. "They're kind-hearted, good people, who spend their lives and their substance in helping others. If you and they can't get on together it's no one's fault. Any more than because fuchsias and sunflowers won't thrive in the same bed. Now calm down a bit, old friend, and tell me——"
"Nothing! It was nothing. Just nonsense. Don't give it another thought, Peter. You said, yourself, a while ago, that many a man who was given up by the doctors at twenty-five lives to be a hundred. And there is no reason on earth why you——"
"Don't!" urged Grimm. "I don't need that. I——"
"Don't fret yourself, Peter," insisted McPherson. "You mustn't get the idea that you are worse off than you really are. Don't get cold feet or let this thing worry you to death. You must live for——"
"Andrew!" chided Grimm, with tolerant reproof. "Are you so tangled up that you think you're talking to Willem instead of to a full-grown man? If it's got to be, it's got to be. And you were wrong not to tell me at once. That is the way with you doctors. You are so in the habit of dealing with hysterical women and hypochondriacs that you forget that a man is shaped by nature to bear the naked truth without having it rigged up beforehand in a lot of fluff to disguise its shape. I think I understand. I may live a while longer. And I may not. The same thing could be said of every one."