“Not here!”
“I don’t think so.”
His chin rested on his hands above the gate. His eyes were gazing out straight before him; looking—as I said before—for something they did not see.
“Do you think you shall be too ill to come next half, Whitney?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Are you feeling worse?” I asked after a minute or two, taken up with staring at the sky.
“That’s what they are always asking me indoors?” he remarked. “It’s just this, Johnny; I don’t feel worse from day to day; I could not say any one morning that I feel a shade worse than I did the previous one: but when I look back a few weeks or months; say, for example, to the beginning of the half, or at Easter, and remember how very well I was then, compared with what I am now, I know that I must be a great deal worse. I could not do now what I did then. Why! I quite believe I might have gone in for Hare-and-Hounds then, if I had chosen. Fancy my trying it now!”
“But you don’t have any pain.”
“None. I’m only weak and tired; always feeling to want to lie down and rest. Every bit of strength and energy has gone out of me, Johnny.”
“You’ll get well,” I said hastily.