“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want to?” It was his cool answer made me ask it.
“Why, of course I do.”
“Well then?”
“I’ll tell you, Johnny Ludlow; there is a feeling within me, and I can’t say why it’s there or whence it comes, that’s always saying to me I shall not get well. At least, whenever I think about it. It seems just as though it were telling me that instead of getting well it will be—be just the opposite.”
“What a dreadful thing to have, Whitney! It must be like a fellow going about with a skeleton!”
“Not at all dreadful. It never frightens me, or worries me. Just as the rest of you look forward naturally to coming back here, and living out your lives to be men, and all that, so I seem not to look to it. The feeling has nothing bad at all about it. If it had, I dare say it would not be there.”
I stood on the small gate and took a swing. It pained me to hear him say this.
“I suppose you mean, Whitney, that you may be going to die?”
“That’s about it, Johnny. I don’t know it; I may get well, after all.”