“Blessed be God for that same!” cried the good Brother, brokenly, as, after close examination, Brother Timothy agreed to this opinion. “And it wasn’t the fault of the rapscallions wid ye that ye’re not killed outright. To be swinging like monkeys from a perch, and ye half sick and lightheaded! Put him in the bed, Brother Timothy; and keep him there till we see what comes of this.”
So Freddy was put to bed in the dim quiet of the infirmary, to watch developments. Brother Timothy gave him an old fashioned “drought,” and he went to sleep most comfortably. He woke up feeling very well indeed, to enjoy an appetizing repast of chicken broth and custard. But when this went on for two days, Freddy began to grow restless.
Infirmary life was very well in school time; indeed, when there were other patients not too sick to share its luxuries, it proved rather a pleasant break in the routine of class-room and study-hall. In fact, a late epidemic of measles that filled every bed had been a “lark” beyond Brother Timothy’s suppression. But the infirmary in vacation, with no chance for the pillow fights that had made the “measles” so hilarious, with no boy in the next bed to exchange confidences and reminiscences, with no cheery shouts from the playground and quadrangle, with only the long stretch of bare, spotless rooms, white cots, and Brother Timothy rolling pills in the “doctor shop,” the infirmary was dull and dreary indeed.
“Can’t I get up to-day, Brother?” asked Freddy on the third morning, as Brother Timothy took away a breakfast tray cleared to the last crumb of toast.
“No,” replied the Brother, who from long dealing with small boys had acquired the stony calm of a desert sphinx. Beneath it he was a gentle, patient, wise old saint, who watched and prayed over his patients in a way they little guessed. “No, you can’t.”
“Gee!” said Freddy, with a rebellious kick at the counterpane. “The bump on my head is gone and I’m not sick at all.”
“We’re not so sure of that,” answered Brother Tim. “You’ve had temperature.”
“What’s ‘temperature’?” asked Freddy, roused with interest.
“Never mind what it is, but you’ll have to stay here till it goes,” answered Brother Tim, with decision.
And Freddy could only lay back on his pillows in hopeless gloom, watching the shadows of the big elm by his window flickering over curtain and coverlet. The great elm—or “Old Top,” as it had been affectionately called by generations of students—was the pride of the college grounds. Many a newcomer felt his heart warm to his strange surroundings when he found the name of father or grandfather cut into the rough bark, where men who had made later marks on history’s page had left youthful sign manual. More than once the growth of the college buildings had threatened to encroach upon Old Top; but the big elm held its prior claim, and new dormitory or infirmary was set back that it might rule with kingly right in its historic place.