“Thank you. That does me good. It’s pretty hard to be accused when you are innocent.”
“Well, you wait. The truth will come out; and when it comes, you will be justified. Oh, there is something else on my mind. Did you know that Chauncy Aldrich was sick?”
“I only heard that he was indoors with some trouble.”
“They say he is pretty sick, and Miss P. Green, where he is boarding, says he is low–spirited. I did not know but that you might like to call and see him.”
Waiter declared that he would go at once. He found Chauncy in a little room with a single window. From this there was a view across the white snowfields to the blackish ocean, scowling angrily like an immense eye under a dark, heavy lid of cloud. Chauncy was lying on his bed, his head raised a little that he might look out upon the winter scenery. His eyes were bright but somber, and his hands were thin and white. That cold bath to which his uncle had unceremoniously treated him, and which he afterwards attempted to explain as a “little joke,” had provoked the sickness so bleaching and weakening and thinning the once vigorous young trader. Every feature showed the effect of the hard fever that had attacked him. Even the knob of hair that was so accustomed to bristle on Chauncy’s head and silently to defy all the world, had now been humbled. His hair in a thick, tangled mass, suggested a fort in ruins.
“Plympton, how are you? I’m real glad to see you. Sit down, old boy. Where have you been all this time?”
“At the station, you know. They tie us pretty tight, but it is my day off. I’m real sorry you are sick, Aldrich.”
“O thank you! Guess I shall pull through it, but it’s awful hard to be cooped up here,” and as he said this, he kicked at the bed–clothes with a sudden energy. “A business man, you know, that is used to stirring, can’t come down to this easily. I’m real glad you came in. Say, are you going up to your uncle’s?”
“I thought I should.”
“Well—”