"Pshaw! I cough easy. You know that."
"You take a jolt and"—Linton flushed with embarrassment—"and I'll have one with you. I was lying just now; I'm colder 'n a frog's belly."
"Happy days," said Quirk, as he tipped the bottle.
"A long life and a wicked one!" Linton drank in his turn. "Now then, get out of those cold compresses. Here's some dry underclothes—thick, too. We'll double up those henskin blankets—for to-night—and I'll keep the fire a-going. I'll cure that cough if I sweat you as white as a washwoman's thumb."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," Jerry declared, as he removed his sodden garments and hung them up. "You'll crawl right into bed with me and we'll have a good sleep. You're near dead."
But Linton was by no means reassured; his tone was querulous when he cried: "Why didn't you come in before you caught cold? S'pose you get sick on me now? But you won't. I won't let you." In a panic of apprehension he dug out his half of the contents of the medicine-kit and began to paw through them. "Who got the cough syrup, Jerry; you or me?" The speaker's voice broke miserably.
Mr. Quirk laid a trembling hand upon his ex-partner's shoulder; his voice, too, was shaky when he said, "You're awful good to me, Tom."
The other shook off the grasp and undertook to read the labels on the bottles, but they had become unaccountably blurred and there was a painful lump in his throat. It seemed to him that Old Jerry's bare legs looked pitifully thin and spidery and that his bony knees had a rheumatic appearance.
"Hell! I treated you mighty mean," said he. "But I'most died when you—began to cough. I thought sure—" Tom choked and shook his gray head, then with the heel of his harsh palm he wiped a drop of moisture from his cheek. "Look at me—cryin'!" He tried to laugh and failed.
Jerry, likewise, struggled with his tears.