Then I remembered the theme.
"What—what's he done?" I demanded.
"He says I must become a writer. Think of it, me a writer! He says I'm a young Shakespeare, that I've been lazy and hid my light under a bushel! He says he knows now what I can do, and if I don't keep up the quality, he'll know the reason why, and write a personal letter to my father. Oh, hell!"
In spite of his evident anguish, I was seized with a convulsive laughter.
Tom stood staring at me moodily.
"You think it's funny,—don't you? I guess it is, but what's going to become of me? That's what I want to know. I've been in trouble before, but never in any like this. And who got me into it? You!"
Here was gratitude!
"You've got to go on writing 'em, now." His voice became desperately pleading. "Say, Hugh, old man, you can temper 'em down—temper 'em down gradually. And by the end of the year, let's say, they'll be about normal again."
He seemed actually shivering.
"The end of the year!" I cried, the predicament striking me for the first time in its fulness. "Say, you've got a crust!"
"You'll do it, if I have to hold a gun over you," he announced grimly.