The Young Doctor put his hand up to his face, and his face felt like parchment. He put his hand down to the book again, and the book cover quivered like flesh.
"What do you m-e-a-n?" he asked.
"I'll tell you what I mean," said the Old Housekeeper, and led him back to the sick room.
Two hours later the Young Doctor staggered into his Best Friend's house clutching a sheet of letter paper in his hand. His shoulders dragged as though under a pack, and every trace of boyishness was wrung like a rag out of his face.
"For Heaven's sake, what's the matter?" cried his friend, starting up.
"Nothing," muttered the Young Doctor, "except the Sick-A-Bed Lady."
"When did she die? What happened?"
The Young Doctor made a gesture of dissent and crawled into a chair and began to fumble with the paper in his hand. Then he shivered and stared his Best Friend straight in the face.
"You might say," he stammered, "that I have just heard from the Sick-A-Bed Lady's Husband—" he choked at the word, and his Friend sat up with astonishment: "You heard me say I had heard from the Sick-A-Bed Lady's Husband?" he persisted. "You heard me say it, mind you. You heard me say that her Husband is sick in Japan—detained indefinitely—so we are afraid he won't get here in time for her confinement—"
The sweat broke out in great drops on his forehead, and his hand that held the sheet of paper shook like a hand that has strained its muscles with heavy weights.