Dr. Meyer sat them all down in his office.
“Well,” he said, turning to Joe, “how do you feel this morning? Did you keep still as I told you to?”
“You bet he did!” Tom put in.
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” the doctor smiled, putting a thermometer into Joe’s mouth, and picking up his left wrist to feel his pulse.
“Now, that’s better than yesterday,” he added, after examining the thermometer. “You see what resting does. I guess you’ll have to do some more of it.”
“You mean I can’t play second next week, either?” Joe cried.
“I mean you can’t play second for a long time,” said the doctor, gravely.
“Is—is there something the matter with me?” Joe cried, growing a little pale.
“There isn’t much yet, but there will be, if you don’t do what I tell you,” the doctor answered. “You have a case of incipient tuberculosis, that hasn’t developed enough yet so we can’t cure it, and make you weigh a hundred and eighty pounds by the time you are twenty, or even nineteen. You ought to be a big man, you know. But it will all depend on you.”
Tom was leaning half out of his chair to listen.