“Oh, sure,” said Joe, sitting down on a rock to rest “Ma had old Doc Jones in first week I was sick, and he gave me some stuff—tasted like a mixture of kerosene and skunk cabbage, too.”
“Doc Jones is no good,” Tom declared. “My father says he wouldn’t have him for a sick cat. He doesn’t even know there are germs. Mr. Rogers told me the Doc thought it was foolish to make us scouts boil the water from strange brooks before we drank it. Haven’t you been to anybody else since, when you didn’t get better?”
“Say, what do you think I am, a millionaire?” said Joe. “I can’t be spending money on fancy doctors, and get through high school, too. Ma’s got all she can handle now, with food and everything costing so much.”
“I know all that, old scout,” Tom answered, putting his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “But I guess it would cost your mother more if you were laid up, wouldn’t it? Now, I’ve got a hunch you need some good doc to give you the once over. Are you tired all the time like this?”
“Oh, no,” Joe replied. “Or only at night, mostly,” he added. “I get kind of hot and tired at night, and I can’t do much work. That’s why I’ve been flunking Cæsar. Old Pap thinks I’m lying down on the job, but I really ain’t. I try every evening, but the words get all mixed together on the page.”
Tom sprang to his feet with the quick, almost catlike agility which, in combination with his thin, rather tall and very wiry frame, had earned for him the nickname of Spider.
“You come along with me,” he said.
“Depends on where you’re going,” Joe laughed.
“Say, I’m patrol leader, ain’t I?”
“You are, but this isn’t the patrol. We aren’t under scout discipline to-day.”