"Sick, ain't he?"
"Yes, sir; got a high fever."
The man with the medal now wrenched his shoulder loose and turned half round toward Sam. Sam never looked so jolly nor so trustworthy: the lizards were in full play all over his cheeks.
"Freddie's all tired out, comrade. I didn't want to bring him, but Kitty begged so. It was crossing the Common, in that heat—your company must have felt it when you come along. The sun beat down terrible on Freddie—that's what used him up."
Sam felt a glow start somewhere near his heels, struggle up through his spinal column and end in his fingers. Being called "comrade" by a man with a medal on his chest was, somehow, better than being mistaken for a millionaire.
"Can't you get a state-room?" Sam asked. Of course the man couldn't—he had heard him say so. The drummer was merely sparring for time—trying to adjust himself to a new situation—one rare with him. Meanwhile the key of Number 15 was turning in his pocket as uneasily as a grain of corn on a hot shovel.
The man shook his head in a hopeless way. The woman replied in his stead—she, too, had fallen a victim to Sam's smile.
"No, sir, that's the worst of it," she said in a choking voice. "If we only had a pillow we could put Freddie's head on it and I could find some place where he might be comfortable. I don't much mind for myself, but it's dreadful about Freddie—" and she bent her head over the child.
Sam thought of the upper berth in Number 15 with two pillows and the lower berth with two more. By this time the key of Number 15 had reached a white heat.