The lad groaned.
“He is a fine child of ten months. Feed him condensed milk. It should be prepared in the following way.”
Fitzhugh skipped four lines.
“This should be fed to him every—”
He skipped again. His eyes wandered down the page, and he read aloud, in a gasping voice, bits of sentences:
“His bath should be tested with a thermometer.” “Must have four hours a day of fresh air.” “Sleeps every morning from ten to—”
He sprang to his feet, dashing the letter to the floor, and marched back and forth across his room, muttering. Then he rubbed his eyes as if to see better. “What under the canopy am I going to do?” he groaned.
A subdued but firm knock rat-a-tat-tatted at the door. “Come in,” moaned the cadet, too lost in misery to try to pull himself together, and in the open doorway Wipes stood saluting.
Wipes was a tall, ugly soldier with a large nose, a red complexion, and a wooden expression. Fitzhugh greeted him like a messenger from heaven.
“Wipes! Oh, Wipes!” he cried in a bleat of joy. “I’d rather see you than any one on earth.”