"I!" answered Richard Crawford, astounded. "You are not very kind, brother John, to speak of my going out, when you know that I have not left the house for months."
"No," said John, "indeed I did not think of that! But now that I do think of it, all the more reason why you should go."
"Why, I could not sit up to ride a block!" said Richard.
"Don't believe a word of it!" said John, gayly. "You never know what you can do, until you try. You are better—you say that you are better—and the more you stay within the house, the more you may. In my opinion, to get well rapidly, you should be out of the house more than half the time, regaining the strength you have lost."
Just then there was a ring at the bell, and Dr. Thompson, the old family physician who had attended both the brothers since boyhood, came in to look at Richard and after the dressing of John's wounded arm. John had made a personal call upon him that morning, and the genial, gray-haired, but young-hearted old doctor had been very glad to see him returned, with no worse wound than that in his arm.
"See here, Doctor," said John, the moment he entered, "I have been giving Richard good advice, and I wish you to bear me out in it."
"Advising me to kill myself, he means!" said Richard.
"Humph! let's hear what it is all about, and see how much you are both wrong!" answered the doctor, who had made that advance in philosophy which recognizes that neither side in an argument is at all likely to represent the whole truth.
"I have been telling him that he should go out, and bantering him to ride with me to the Central Park," said John.
"And I have been telling him that I had not strength enough to ride a single block, much less to the Central Park," said Richard.