Karl awoke next morning with the sense of something wrong. Something was making him uncomfortable, but he was not wide enough awake at first to locate the trouble. He lay there dozing for a few minutes and when he roused again he knew that his eyes were hurting badly. He awakened instantly then. His eyes? Why, they had bothered him a little all day yesterday. Was there something the matter with them?
He got up, raised the shade and looked in the glass. They looked badly irritated, both of them. They felt wretchedly; he could scarcely keep looking into the glass. Then leaning over the dressing table, he looked more closely. He thought he saw something he did not like. He took a hand mirror and went to the window. He could see better now, and the better light verified the other one. It was true that in the corner of one eye there was a drop of pus. In the other there was a suggestion of the same thing.
He began to dress, proceeding slowly, his brows knitted, evidently thinking about something, and worried. Then he opened a drawer, took out a handkerchief, got the drop of pus from his eye and arranged the handkerchief for preserving it.
He would find out about that, and the sooner the better! He did not like it. He would see an oculist, too, this morning. It was plain he was going to have some trouble with his eyes.
Ernestine noticed them at once. What made them so red?—she wanted to know. Did they hurt? And wasn't there something he could put in them? He told her he was going to look after them at once. He could not afford to lose any time, and of course he could do nothing without his eyes.
Immediately after breakfast he started over to the laboratory.
It was Sunday morning and there would be no one there, which was so much the better. He wanted to get this straightened out.
He had his head down all the way over to the university, partly because his eyes bothered him and partly because he was thinking hard. The trouble had evidently been coming on yesterday. He stopped short. That trick Parkman told him about! But of course—moving on a little—that could not have anything to do with this. He had no recollection—he was very sure—then he walked faster, and the lines of his mouth told that he was troubled.
When he reached the laboratory he began immediately upon the microscopic examination. He hoped he could get at it through that, for the culture process meant a long wait. But after fifteen minutes of careful work the "smear" proved negative. There remained then only the longer route of the culture.
He did not begin upon that immediately. He sat there trying to think back to just what it was he had been doing Friday afternoon. The latter part of the afternoon he had been sitting here by this table. That was the time he was so buoyed up—getting so fine a light on the thing. It was the cancer problem then—but in the nature of things nothing could have happened with that. But there were always other things—all those things known to the pathological laboratory.