“Hello!” he greeted. “Awake, Crail?”
“Yes, I—guess so.” Monty’s voice was hoarse and croaky and it hurt him to speak. “Where am I? Whose room is this?”
“Mine and Sawyer’s. I bunked with Sawyer after the fire. How are you feeling?”
But Monty forgot to reply, for the word “fire” had supplied the missing clue to memory. For a minute he was silent, going over the events of early morning. At last: “What time is it?” he asked.
“Ten of nine.”
“Oh! What—where—how’s Standart?”
“He’s over in Manning, in the infirmary. He’s all right, I guess. Swallowed a lot of smoke, I heard, and will be laid up for a few days, but I guess he will back out all right. Lucky you found him, Crail! It was a close squeak for him!”
“Yes.” Monty closed his eyes a moment, opened them again and asked: “Have I had any breakfast?” But there was no answer and he discovered that the boy whose bed he was occupying had meanly taken advantage of his momentary lapse from consciousness to sneak out. Monty reflected that a cup of coffee would be pretty fine, and he considered getting up and finding one. But somehow, while he was making up his mind to the necessary exertion, he fell asleep again.
When he awoke the next time the breakfast was there and a maid was summoning his attention to the fact. It wasn’t a very hearty meal, but it did him a lot of good. Still later the doctor came in and asked him a number of questions and felt his pulse and told him to stay in bed until the next day. He left some tablets which Monty was instructed to dissolve in his mouth and went his way. At various times other persons put their heads in at the door or entered for awhile; Mrs. Fair, and Brill, the owner of the bed, and Joe Mullins and four or five of the Morris House fellows. And finally Leon came and perched himself on the edge of the bed and talked in whispers until Monty begged him to “cut out the bedside manner.”
“What happened, anyway?” demanded Monty. “Did the house burn up entirely?”