He refused to be discouraged, however. His health was too good for that. The doctor pointed to him with pride as a patient who followed instructions to the letter and was not going to die of the disease which had brought him to Saranac. And they wrote to G. G's father—who was finding life very expensive—that, if he could keep G. G. at Saranac, or almost anywhere out of New York, for another year or two, they guaranteed—as much as human doctors can—that G. G. would then be as sound as a bell and fit to live anywhere.
This pronouncement was altogether too much of a good thing for Fate. As G. G's father walked up-town from his office, Fate raised a dust in his face which, in addition to the usual ingredients of city dust, contained at least one thoroughly compatible pair of pneumonia germs. These went for their honey-moon on a pleasant, warm journey up G. G's father's left nostril and to house-keeping in his lungs. In a few hours they raised a family of several hundred thousand bouncing baby germs; and these grew up in a few minutes and began to set up establishments of their own right and left.
G. G.'s father admitted that he had a "heavy cold on the chest." It was such a heavy cold that he became delirious, and doctors came and sent for nurses; and there was laid in the home of G. G.'s father the corner-stone of a large edifice of financial disaster.
He had never had a partner. His practice came to a dead halt. The doctors whom G. G.'s mother called in were, of course, the best she had ever heard of. They would have been leaders of society if their persons had been as fashionable as their prices. The corner drug store made its modest little profit of three or four hundred per cent on the drugs which were telephoned for daily. The day nurse rolled up twenty-five dollars a week and the night nurse thirty-five. The servant's wages continued as usual. The price of beef, eggs, vegetables, etc., rose. The interest on the mortgage fell due. And it is a wonder, considering how much he worried, that G. G.'s father ever lived to face his obligations.
Cynthia, meanwhile, having heard that G. G. was surely going to get well, was so happy that she couldn't contain the news. And she proceeded to divulge it to her father.
"Papa," she said, "I think I ought to tell you that years ago, at Saranac—that Christmas when I went up with the Andersons—I met the man that I am going to marry. He was a boy then; but now we're both grown up and we feel just the same about each other."
And she told her father G. G.'s name and that he had been very delicate, but that he was surely going to get well. Cynthia's father, who had always given her everything she asked for until now, was not at all enthusiastic.
"I can't prevent your marrying any one you determine to marry, Cynthia," he said. "Can this young man support a wife?"
"How could he!" she exclaimed—"living at Saranac and not being able to work, and not having any money to begin with! But surely, if the way we live is any criterion, you could spare us some money—couldn't you?"
"You wish me to say that I will support a delicate son-in-law whom I have never seen? Consult your intelligence, Cynthia."