"Well, Mr. Kendrick?"
"Benson's down with typhoid. Came back with it from the trip to Chicago.
What do you think of that?"
"I thought he was looking a little seedy before he went. Well, well, that's too bad. Right in the May trade, too. Is he pretty sick?"
"So the doctor says. He's been keeping up on that trip when he ought to have been in bed. He's in bed now, all right. I took him in with a nurse to the City Hospital on the 10:40 Limited; stretcher in the baggage-car."
"Don't see where he got typhoid around here at this time of year," mused
Carson.
"Nobody sees, but that doesn't matter. He has it, and it's up to us to pull him through—and to get along without him."
They sat down to talk it over. While they were at it the telephone came into the discussion with a summons of Richard to a long-distance connection. To his amazement, when communication was established between himself and his distant interlocutor, clear and vibrant came to him over the wire a voice he had dreamed of but had not heard for four months:
"Mr. Kendrick?"
"Yes. Is it—it isn't—"
"This is Miss Gray. Mr. Kendrick, your grandfather wants you very much, at our home. He has had an accident."