“Out late?” O'Hara queried.
Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him anxiously before replying.
“No, it's not that. It's my eyes. They seem to be going back on me, that's all.”
For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the office furniture. But O'Hara's heart was not softened.
“I tell you what, Kit,” he said one day, “you've got to see an oculist. There's Doctor Hassdapple. He's a crackerjack. And it won't cost you anything. We can get it for advertizing. I'll see him myself.”
And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the oculist.
“There's nothing the matter with your eyes,” was the doctor's verdict, after a lengthy examination. “In fact, your eyes are magnificent—a pair in a million.”
“Don't tell O'Hara,” Kit pleaded. “And give me a pair of black glasses.”
The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked glowingly of the time when The Billow would be on its feet.
Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income. Small it was, compared with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong to several clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter. In point of fact, since his associate-editorship, his expenses had decreased prodigiously. He had no time to spend money. He never saw the studio any more, nor entertained the local Bohemians with his famous chafing-dish suppers. Yet he was always broke, for The Billow, in perennial distress, absorbed his cash as well as his brains. There were the illustrators, who periodically refused to illustrate, the printers, who periodically refused to print, and the office-boy, who frequently refused to officiate. At such times O'Hara looked at Kit, and Kit did the rest.