“Is it a game?” questioned the hopeful Bettina. “No, Bettykin. It’s a germ-cage. No germs can get out of that unless they’re carried out by somebody or something. And, in that case, they’re boiled to death on the gas-stove outside.”
At this moment Charley called for a drink of water. After he had emptied the glass, his mother took it out and dropped it into the disinfecting hot bath. Then she washed her hands, dried them on a strip of the paper towel and dropped that in the basket.
“I see,” said Julia, the observant. “Nothing gets any scarlet fever on it except what Charley touches. And everything he touches has to be washed as soon as it comes out of the dead-line.”
“Exactly. We’ll make a trained nurse of you, yet, Junkum,” approved the Health Master.
“Then,” said Julia slowly, “I think Bobs ought to wash his hands now. Mother opened the door after handling Charley’s glass, and when he went to watch her wash the glass, he put his hand on the knob.”
“One mark against Bobs,” announced the doctor. “The rigor of the game.”
A game it proved to be, with Charley for umpire, and a very keen umpire, as he was the beneficiary of the penalties. For some days Charley quite fattened on literature dispensed orally by the incautious. Presently, however, they became so wary that it was hard to catch them.
Then, indeed, was the doctor hard put to it to keep the invalid amused. The children invented games and charades for him. A special telephone wire was run to his room so that he might talk with his friends. Bobs won commendations by flying a kite one windy day and passing the twine up through Charley’s window, whereby the bedridden one spent a happy afternoon “feeling her pull.” And the next day Betty won the first and only dollar by discovering a small and early fly which, presumably, had crawled in by the hole bored for the kite twine. As to any encroachments upon the physical quiet of his patient or the protective guardianship surrounding him, the Health Master was adamant, until, on a day, after examining the prisoner’s throat and nose, and going over him, as Mr. Clyde put it, “like a man buying a horse that’s cheaper than he ought to be,” he sent for the Health Officer.
“It’s a clean throat,” said Dr. Merritt. “Never mind the desquamating skin. We’ll call it off.”
Whereupon Charley was raised from his bed, and having symbolically broken the tape-line about his bed, headed a solemn and slow procession of the entire family to the front porch where he formally took down the red placard and tore it in two. The halves still ornament the playroom, as a memento.