Then the doctor got busy with the pencil gag and left me enough prescriptions to keep the druggist in pocket money throughout the winter.
Then my friends and relatives began to drop in and annoy me with suggestions.
"Pop" Barclay sat by my bedside and, after I had barked for him two or three times, he decided I had inflammation of the lungs and was insistent that I tie a rubber band around my chest and rub myself with gasolene.
I told Pop I had no desire to become a human automobile so he got mad and went home. But before he got mad he drank six bottles of beer and before he went home he invited himself back to dinner.
Then Hep Hardy dropped in and ten minutes later he had me making signs for an undertaker.
Hep comes to the bedside of the afflicted in the same restful manner that a buzz-saw associates with a log of pine.
He insisted upon taking my pulse and listening to my heart beats, but when he attempted to turn my eyelids back to see if I had a touch of the glanders every germ in my body rose in rebellion and together we chased Hep out of the room.
The next calamity was Teddy Pearson, who had an apartment on the floor above us. Teddy had spent the previous night at a Tango party and ever since daylight he had been beating home to windward. His cargo had shifted and the seaway was rough. Still clad in the black and white scenery with the silk bean-cover somewhat mussed he groped across the darkened room and solemnly shook hands with me.
Then he sat in a chair by the bedside and began to sing soft lullabies to a hold-over.
Presently he reached out his arm and made all the gestures that go with the act of hitting a bell to summon a waiter.