“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” said his father.
“Anyhow,” his sister observed, “you feel pretty good.”
Jimmie suddenly realized that he did feel pretty well. He could not, for the life of him, figure out why. Certainly he was not taking any excessive pleasure out of Biff’s revenge on himself. Certainly he had not grown so cold toward his family in two days that he enjoyed seeing them suffer. But he felt an unmistakable rise of his spirits.
He let them rise while his parents and his sister sank into a fresh morass of silence. Presently his mother whispered, “Right now, he might be—!”
“Steady!” said her husband.
Jimmie said, half reassuringly, half in protest of the morbid anticipations of his mother, “Oh, he’ll be all right. You could see that, by his face. That intern said so too.
He’s the kind who know their onions.”
“I suppose you”—his mother said hotly—“are a bit of a surgeon yourself! Along with all your other intellectual accomplishments! I suppose you could tell, from a glance, that Biff was perfectly all right!”
“Some,” Jimmie said quietly. “I’ve seen a lot of people hurt, you know.”
Nobody answered that. Sarah kept glancing at her brother with intentness. She was thinking. Her face slowly showed conclusion—illuminating conclusion; when it did, Jimmie said, “All right. What is it?”