In the afternoon some boxes were to be moved to make room for new culinary supplies. He was ordered to handle a truck. Encountering a big box, he could not lift it.
"What's the matter there?" said the head porter. "Can't you handle it?"
He was straining hard to lift it, but now he quit.
"No," he said, weakly.
The man looked at him and saw that he was deathly pale.
"Not sick, are you?" he asked.
"I think I am," returned Hurstwood.
"Well, you'd better go sit down, then."
This he did, but soon grew rapidly worse. It seemed all he could do to crawl to his room, where he remained for a day.
"That man Wheeler's sick," reported one of the lackeys to the night clerk.