A COLLEGE EDUCATION
In those days there was no Isabella McCosh Infirmary with sun-baths and electric bells and trained nurses wearing clean, light-blue dresses which rustle. When you fell ill in your room you stayed there. What you had to eat was brought by the waiter from the club—when he had finished washing the dishes—in a basket with a napkin soaking in the soup. Your friends went for the doctor and nursed you until your health returned, or your relatives came, which was better.
But there were particular reasons why Elliot did not consider it worth while sending for things to eat. He breakfasted on cracked ice which Ben stole from the cooler downstairs. For luncheon he munched small bits of ice. He dined upon ice. And every two hours he took some foul white stuff that the doctor put in a tumbler on a trunk beside his watch, which latter moved very slowly these days.
At one time he began counting the half-inch circles and the two-inch circles in the wall-paper figure on the right-hand side of
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