CHAPTER X
I
SHORTLY after Boyd's departure for the East Kenneth came down with a bad cold that resulted in an attack of tonsillitis. He was confined to the house for some days, and when Dr. Wallace finally permitted him to drive out to the Bungalow again, he was pretty wobbly and was afflicted with a bad cough. As may be imagined this seemingly endless separation had been a terrible thing to the lovers, and they greeted each other with the appropriate ecstasy. An apparently blind, unjust, unreasonable fate had smitten them so sorely that at times it had seemed there was no justice in the world. Seconds, minutes, hours, days even, that might have afforded each its splendid rapture, had trooped slowly—so slowly—and grayly by; and were lost irretrievably in the irrevocable past!
Townsend Brainerd remarked:
"Hullo, Ken! How's the boy? Thought you were sick: you certainly made a quick recovery."
But it developed that Ken had not made quite a recovery. He retained an annoying cough that refused to pay any attention to Dr. Wallace's concoctions. Of course he made little account of it himself; but Daphne was absurdly anxious.
"A change of air would remedy the matter," precise little Dr. Wallace told her. "A sojourn of not less than two weeks over the mountains, or anywhere away from the coast, is indicated. These bronchial affections linger persistently at this season."
Kenneth at first scouted the ideas as absurd. He was a great strong brute, and a little cough like this was nothing to bother about for a second. He couldn't get away: he had his work to do. And, besides, think of what it would mean! "Two weeks!
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