“You’ve done it already.”
“Look here, Morrow, you’re a great man, thanks to your appetite. But beware! A man is also as old as his appetite makes him. You’ll die of old age by the time you are forty. If I had your appetite I’d have been dead ten years ago. You are the most unpromising insurance risk here except Doctor Newman, who was never made to be an old man and knows it, and who can thus eat himself to death with impunity. There is hope for the others. Doctor Frank fasts occasionally, and thus postpones the day of reckoning. Doctor Senn is smoked through and through, and smoked bodies undergo no farther change or decay. Doctor Brower is water-soaked, and water-soaked timber sometimes lasts a long time. Doctor Hughes and I are drying up, and when we are thoroughly dried we will last longer than any of you.”
“How about me?” asked Doctor Waite.
“I cannot pass upon your case, for the nourishing and keeping qualities of eggs are uncertain. In a cold climate you might live quite a long time.”
While I was talking, all had left the dining-room except Doctor Waite, who arose to follow them. I knew that she was exceedingly conscientious and truthful, and I determined to ask her a question about a matter which was troubling my conscience.
“Doctor Waite, you have asked me a question; may I ask you an equally important one in return?”
“Why, certainly, Doctor, and I shall try and be as frank as you were when I asked mine.”
“I merely wish to ask you if you have noticed anything wrong about me?”
She said she had noticed that I had been in a critical state of mind ever since we left Colón.
“In a critical state? Is that so? Am I as bad off as that?”