"Pearl," he said, "what is wrong with me? What terrible pain is this that has me in its clutches?" The strength had gone out of the man, he could no longer battle with it.
Pearl hesitated. It is not well to tell sick people your gravest fears. "Still Arthur is English, and the English are gritty," Pearl thought to herself.
"Arthur," she said, "I think you have appendicitis."
Arthur lay motionless for a few moments. He knew what that was.
"But that requires an operation," he said at length, "a very skilful one."
"It does," Pearl replied, "and that's what you'll get as soon as Dr. Clay gets here, I'm thinking."
Arthur turned his face into his pillow. An operation for appendicitis, here, in this place, and by that young man, no older than himself perhaps? He knew that at home, it was only undertaken by the oldest and best surgeons in the hospitals.
Pearl saw something of his fears in his face. So she hastened to reassure him. She said cheerfully:
"Don't ye be worried, Arthur, about it at all at all. Man alive! Dr. Clay thinks no more of an operation like that than I would o' cuttin' your nails."
A strange feeling began at Arthur's heart, and spread up to his brain. It had come! It was here!