The journey home was rather a quiet one between Roger and his father. They boarded a surface car on Broadway, and, as it swung along through the turmoil of this principal New York street, they were thinking of what they had just heard. Moving now fast and now slow, according to the obstructions of trucks on the tracks, the car clanged on its way. Once it stopped short, suddenly, to allow a spark-emitting fire engine and a swaying truck with long ladders to dash by to a blaze. Then Roger leaped to his feet, watching, as long as possible, the exciting rush of the red-helmeted and rubber-coated men, his eyes brightening as he noted the plunging, rearing horses.
"Let's get out and go to the fire!" he called to his father.
"Not now, son," answered Mr. Anderson. "Your mother will be anxious to hear what Dr. Glasby said, and we don't want to delay and cause her worry, you know."
"All right," agreed Roger, with just a little disappointment in his tone, for he did want to see the fire. But he soon forgot that in wondering what would happen if he didn't have to go to school for a whole year. The suggestion contained such possibilities that he was lost in a maze with plans of what he would do with his time.
Meanwhile the car continued along more rapidly, and it was not a great while before father and son reached home. Then, as Roger helped his five-year-old brother Edward to build a castle out of blocks, Mr. Anderson told his wife the result of the visit to Dr. Glasby. She was much relieved when she learned there was nothing serious the matter with her son, and there was a happy look in her eyes as she glanced at her two boys playing together on the floor.
The Andersons lived in a large but pleasant apartment house on the "west side," as it is called in New York. It was on Thirty-third Street, just west of Ninth Avenue, along which thoroughfare the elevated railroad passed. It was so near this, that in warm weather, when the windows were open nights, Roger could hear the rattle of the trains and the clatter and hum of the electric motor cars. In fact it was quite a noisy place, where Roger lived, but no one in the neighborhood seemed to mind it, or, if they did, they had grown so used to it that they never spoke of it. Of course there was no yard, and no place to play, except in the street, for space is too valuable in New York to have yards to houses. But there was the flat roof of the big apartment, where scores of families lived, and Roger and his boy friends sometimes enjoyed their sports up there.
Roger Anderson was just past his fifteenth year, rather small for his age, and not nearly as strong and sturdy as his parents wished he was. Lately his eyes had been troubling him, and he had complained of frequent headaches. He was in his first season at high school, and what, with taking up Latin and algebra, two new worlds of study for the boy, he had been rather closely applied to his books at night. As he was ambitious he threw himself into the vim of learning with an energy that was pleasing to his parents and teachers, though it had a bad effect on his health. For, after a few weeks of school, it was noticed that he was failing in energy. There were many days when, in spite of his desire, he felt disinclined to go to his classes, and he was troubled with dizziness. In short he seemed in such poor shape that Mr. Anderson determined on a visit to Dr. Glasby, the old family physician. That night, after the consultation with the medical man, when Roger had gone to bed, his father and mother sat up to talk the matter over.
"I don't like to think of his losing a year's schooling," said Mr. Anderson, as he thought how valuable education was.
"Better that than to have him get really ill and have to stop altogether," replied Mrs. Anderson.
Both were silent a few minutes, turning the question over in their minds.