"I'm sure you will," I answered. "If you don't, there's nobody else who can."
In a week or two, by grinding steadily on at my work and by a few more quiet talks with Eleanore and her father, I could feel myself safely back on my ground.
But one morning Sue broke in on me.
"I've just heard from a friend of Joe Kramer's," she said, "that he is dangerously ill. And there's no one to look after him. Hadn't you better go yourself?"
"Of course," I assented gruffly. "I'll go down at once."
It seemed as though the Fates and Sue were in league to keep Joe in my life.
I went to Joe's office and found the address of the room where he slept. It was over a German saloon close by. It was a large, low-ceilinged room, bare and cheaply furnished, with dirty curtains at the windows, dirty collars and shirts on the floor. It was cold. In the high old-fashioned fireplace the coal fire had gone out. Joe was lying dressed on the bed. He jumped up as I entered and came to me with his face flushed and his eyes dilated. He gripped my hand.
"Why, hello, Kid," he cried. "Glad to see you!" And then with a quick drop of his voice: "Hold on, we mustn't talk so loud, we've got to be quiet here, you know." He turned away from me restlessly. "I've been hunting for hours for that damn book. Their cataloguing system here is rotten, Kid, it's rotten!" As he spoke he was slowly feeling his way along the dirty white wall of his room. "They've cheated us, Bill, I'm on to 'em now! That's what college is really for these days, to hide the books we ought to read!"
It came over me suddenly that Joe was back in college, on one of those library evenings of ours. I felt a tightening at my throat.