"Got a dollar?" asked the youth, irrelevantly. His thin, pale nose quivered a bit.
"I don't know," said Charles-Norton, hesitatingly. Dollars were big in his budget. "Why?"
The youth drew from a pocket a yellow cardboard. "Got a lottery ticket I want to sell," he said easily. "Little Texas. Hundred Thousand first prize and lots of other prizes. Got to sell it to pay me lunch. Played the ponies yesterday."
Charles-Norton eyed the ticket doubtfully. Usually, he would not have considered the matter a moment. But somehow the incident of the morning had placed him at a disadvantage toward the pale youth. Vaguely he was moved by a wish to regain by some act the respect of this exacting person. He bought the ticket.
"Maybe this was the foolish act that all this flapping announced," he said to himself, once outside, in answer to a not uncertain prick of his marital conscience. "Buying this ticket is like buying a lightning-rod; it may draw off the lightning!"
But his singular malady, during the afternoon, did not disappear. It waxed, in fact; it passed the borders of the spiritual and assumed physical symptoms. "Dolly," he said, when he was again within the warmth of the little flat in the evening; "Dolly, would you mind looking at my shoulders after a while?"
"Why, of course, I'll look at them, Goosie," answered Dolly, immediately alert at the possibility of doing something for the big man; "what is the matter with your shoulders, Goosie?"
"I don't know," he said, sinking a bit wearily into the Morris chair. "They pain; just like rheumatism or growing pain. And they tickle too, Dolly; they tickle all the time." He crossed his arms, raising a hand to each shoulder, and rubbed them with a shiver of delight. "It's a nuisance," he said.
"Well, we'll see about it right away," said Dolly. "Right after supper." Her eyes grew big with concern. "You may have caught cold. Come on, dear," she said, brightening; "I've the dandiest, deliciousest soup, right out of the Ladies' Home Journal, for you!"