He forgot to eat; he forgot that he had not slept; he sat oblivious of time and river, the past or the future; he grappled with pages of print, with broadsides of pictures, with new and thrilling words, with sentences like hammer blows, with paragraphs that marched like music, with thoughts that had the gay abandon of a bird in song. And the things he learned!
When night fell he was dismayed by his weariness, and could not understand it. For a little while he ransacked his dulled wits to find the explanation, and when he had fixed Prebol for the night, with medicine, water, and a lamp handy to matches, he told the patient:
“Seems like the gimp’s kind of took out of me. My eyes are sore, an’ I doubt am I quite well.”
“Likely yo’ didn’t sleep well,” Prebol suggested. “A man cayn’t sleep days if he ain’t used to hit.”
“Sleep days?” Rasba looked wildly about him.
“Sho! When did I git to sleep, why, I ain’t slept—I––Lawse!”
Prebol laughed aloud.
“Yo’ see, Parson, yo’ all cayn’t set up all night with a pretty gal an’ not sleep hit off. Yo’ shore’ll git tired, sportin’ aroun’.”
“Sho!” Rasba snapped, and then a smile broke across his countenance. He cried out with laughter, and admitted: “Hit’s seo, Prebol! I neveh set up with a gal befo’ I come down the riveh. Lawse! I plumb forgot.”
“I don’t wonder,” Prebol replied, gravely. “She’d make any man forget. She sung me to sleep, an’ I slept like I neveh slept befo’.”