“Yeah. I was just over there. Not a whiff. I had a lunch sent in for you. Keeping it hot with a bunsen burner.”
CHAPTER IX
BIFF LOOKED Up from his book, when the doorstop squeaked on the polished linoleum floor. “Hi, Jimmie! Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. Sit.”
It was Wednesday—and eight o’clock in the evening. The hospital was on the way to Dan and Adele’s house. Jimmie had decided to go there. He had an hour to kill between the end of dinner at home and the fateful stroke of nine. His visits to Biff had been perfunctory. He felt indifferent to his brother. His understanding of Biff’s psychology—deeply hidden from Biff himself—brought to Jimmie a sense of repugnance whenever he thought of the big youngster with the broken legs. Now, he pulled up an easy chair with a white slip-cover, glanced at the vases of flowers, the fruit, the pictures of pretty girls, and peered at Biff with a formal cheerfulness. “How you doing?”
“Okay. Swell. Healing like nobody they ever had here! Be staggering around on crutches in a while. I may even get to the football game a week from Saturday—in a wheelchair. Boy!”
Jimmie nodded comprehension of the mood. “I went—last week.”
“Yeah. Dad said so. How do the doggone old Bearcats look?”
“Pretty good.” Jimmie laughed. “You know, for the first quarter, I hardly recognized the old game. Looked more like basketball. And the subs kept running out like waves of infantry. But I caught on. That Ward—and Ellis—and Becker—they’re dynamite!”
Biff assented. “I’ll say. I ought to know. I was in there with all of ’em—this time last year.”
For fifteen minutes they held a lively discussion of football. When the topic lagged they reached one of the silences which so envelop a visitor and a hospital patient.