“With a spoonful of quinine in epsom salts, taken raw, if you don’t pay attention. Now listen to me.” The doctor’s tone was as cheery as ever.
“Well, don’t make it necessary for me to tell you when you’ve talked enough.”
In spite of the joking words, there was a listless hopelessness in Shirley’s voice, matching the dull, listless eyes. And Horace Carey rose to the situation at once.
“A stranger named Thomas Smith came to the Crossing 80 the day I came down here. Rather a small man, with close-set, dark eyes; signed his name in a cramped, left-handed writing. I noticed his right hand seemed a little stiff, sort of paralyzed at the wrist. But here’s the funny thing. He made me uneasy, and he made me think of you. Could you identify him? He looked as much like you as I look like that young darkey, Bo Peep, up at the Jacobs House.”
“None of my belongings. You are a delicate plant to be so sensitive to strangers.” Jim sighed from mental weariness more than from physical weakness.
“I was sensitive, and when I heard Stewart call out your name in the mail and saw this man step up as if to take the letter, I took it. And if you’ll take a brace and decide it’s worth while you can have it. It’s addressed in a woman’s handwriting, not a Thomas Smith style of pinching letters out of a penholder and squeezing them off the pen point. Lie down there, man!”
For Jim was sitting up, listening intently. With trembling fingers he took the letter and read it eagerly. Then he looked at Carey with eyes in which listlessness had given place to determination.
“Doctor, I was ready to throw up the game five minutes ago. Now I’ll do anything to get back to strength and work.”
“You don’t seem very joyous, however,” the doctor responded.
“Joy don’t belong to me. We parted company some years ago. But life is mine.”