“Walk around?” Joe said, bewildered. “I have to walk to school, and back.”
“No you don’t. No more school for you this term,” the doctor answered.
Joe’s jaw dropped. “Why—I—I—I’ll not get promoted into the senior class, then!” he gasped. “Oh, please, I must go to school!”
“Good gracious, here’s a boy that wants to go to school!” laughed Dr. Meyer. “It does you credit, my son, but it can’t be.”
“But it’s been so hard for mother——”
“It would be harder for her if you couldn’t go to school at all—ever, wouldn’t it?” said the doctor, leaning forward and laying a kindly hand on Joe’s knee.
“Yes—yes, sir,” said Joe, who was now pretty white and scared.
“Dr. Meyer,” Tom put in, “oughtn’t Joe to go away somewhere to the mountains—the Adirondacks, or Colorado, or—or some place?”
“Well, he’d undoubtedly mend quicker in the Rockies, if he could be looked after,” the doctor replied. “I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely necessary in his case, but if he knows somebody out there to look after him, and can afford it——”
“’Course I can’t afford it, Spider,” Joe put in. “Quit pipe dreamin’.”