“I guess you’re pretty used to it,” Tom mused. “Say, how long have you been this way?”
Clif looked startled, but Loring only smiled as he answered: “Sixteen years and seven months, Tom.”
“Six—you mean always?”
“Ever since I was born.”
“Gosh! Can’t they do anything? What’s it like?”
Clif thought the questions in rather poor taste and looked apologetic on his friend’s behalf, but Loring didn’t appear to mind. “They haven’t done much yet,” he answered. “I’ve been treated by a lot of doctors, here and abroad, but nothing much has come of it. My leg bones don’t pick out the right food to grow on, it seems. They’re too fond of lime. Calcification the doctors call it. That and a lot of other things. Usually each one has his own pet name for it. Anyway, there’s too much chalk in those bones down there, and if I ever got mad with you, Tom, and kicked you, you’d have the laugh on me because I’d break my leg. They’re so brittle they’re no use at all as legs. Sometimes I think it would be better to get rid of them and save the price of shoes and stockings, but no one else seems to. The doctor father is supporting now makes believe I’ll be able to use the silly things some day; says that as I get older the bone structure will get more sense. I don’t know, though.”
“But don’t you do anything for it?” asked Clif.
“Oh, yes, I’m on a funny diet, for one thing. You’d be surprised, fellows, to know what perfectly innocent looking things contain lime! And this doctor’s working on the theory that if I don’t give the bones enough lime to suit them they’ll get discouraged and use something else. Then poor old Wattles has to take me to walk every morning and night.”
“Take you to walk!” exclaimed Tom incredulously.
“That’s what he calls it,” laughed Loring. “We’re doing an eighth of a mile now twice a day; a two-twenty-yard dash, you know! You see, they won’t let me use my legs myself, so Wattles does it for me. He massages the pesky things and works all the joints—as carefully as if they were made of glass—and has a jolly good time of it. Wattles is really a brick. He had to put in a week or more at the hospital and take a course of instruction before he could get the job, and I believe he honestly thinks now that he’s an authority on bone diseases. He’s a conscientious chap, too, and if the house caught on fire while he was ‘exercising’ me I’ll bet he wouldn’t get out until I’d had my full thirty minutes!”