The fellow-boarders, who sat on the edge of the bed, in default of the one unbroken chair which their host kept for himself, as easier than a mattress to get up from suddenly, did not take sides for or against him in his theories of his discomfort. One of them glanced at the broken window.
"How do you glaze that in the daytime? You can't use the bolster then?"
"I'm not in, much, in the daytime."
It was a medical student who had spoken, but he was now silent, and the other said, after they had listened to the twitter of a piano in the parlor under the room, "That girl's playing will be the death of me."
"Not if her mother's cooking isn't," the medical student, whose name was Wallace, observed with a professional effect.
"Why don't you prescribe something for it?" the law student suggested.
"Which?" Wallace returned.
"I don't believe anything could cure the playing. I must have meant the cooking."
"You're a promising young jurist, Blakeley. What makes you think I could cure the cooking?"
"Oh, I just wondered. The sick one gets paler every day. I wonder what ails her."