“They’re telephoning for you down at the newspaper office,” she yawned. “I didn’t tell them you were—that you couldn’t.... I thought maybe you might like to do some writing in bed, if they want you to.”
“No, I’m not going to do any writing in bed. I feel as if that is what I’ve been doing always. I’m going to wait until I can get up, and then I’m going to work in earnest.”
She regarded him dubiously, not understanding at all. “And what shall I say?” she asked.
“Tell them I’m laid up, and that I’ll be down to see them as soon as I’m able to be about.”
“Very well.”
“And mother—don’t say I’ve got a sprained ankle. Think of something else.”
“Something else——” Mrs. Baron succeeded now in opening her eyes to their normal width.
“It doesn’t sound very impressive. Everybody sprains his ankle. You might say I’ve broken my leg, if you can’t think of anything else.”
“A sprained ankle is a sprained ankle,” was the answer he received; and he dropped back on his pillow as limply as if he had been overcome by a great flash of truth.
Almost immediately, however, he heard a distant commotion on the stairway and, after an instant of whispering and murmuring in the hall, his door flew open. To his astonishment, Bonnie May literally ran into the room.