“Now what's up?”
He saw that his visitor was pale and worn, with dark haggard lines about his eyes, and the hands he held out toward the blaze were thin and tremulous.
“Have you been ill?” he questioned.
The younger boy shook his head.
“What's wrong then?”
For answer Lester cried hoarsely in a voice choked with emotion and grief, “I am done for, Philip—done for! I am dying by inches—I!—and a year ago I thought I should live forever.”
He buried his face in his hands, sobbing like a child.
The spectacle of a man in tears was not at all soothing to Philip. Perhaps there might have been times when he would have done the same thing, but that was no excuse for Lester.
He had done and probably would continue to do a great many things that he could not pardon in another.
“Come! come! this won't do. Be a man,” he said coldly.