Yet, there must surely have been some strange, unknown link of sympathy between them, for they both caught the influenza on the same day—it was a Sunday morning—and both permitted it to develop into double pneumonia.
After all, spar as we may, are we not all brothers and sisters?
The double pneumonia ought to have drawn them together; but, as he lived in Piccadilly and she in Queen's Gate, and each was thoroughly self-centred—nothing produces egoism so certainly as influenza—neither knew of the illness of the other.
Providence denied to both that subtle joy, and they got to the mutton chop and chipped potato stage of convalescence in childlike ignorance of each other's misfortune.
There must certainly have been a curious community of mind between them, for both their doctors ordered them to Margate, and they both took rooms at Westgate. Now a similar taste in seaside places is undoubtedly an excellent foundation for eternal friendship. Let the world crumble in atoms, two people who both like Westgate will still find something to talk about amid the confusion occasioned by the dissolution of kingdoms.
Jack Burnham arrived at the St Mildred's Hotel on a Thursday, with his man.
Harriet Lorton came on the following Friday, with her maid.
Neither had any notion of the other's proceedings until they met back to back, as you shall presently hear.