night-gown, and there was an ice-bag bound about his flushed forehead.
"Sick?" asked Lonely, with fine superfluity.
"Sick o' staying cooped up here," said Lionel Clarence, wrathfully, with considerably more energy than Lonely had looked for.
Now one of the keenest disappointments of Lonely's life had always been the fact that he was not afflicted with some great and incurable malady,[1] During all the first part of the small-fruit season he firmly argued with himself that he had consumption, often not being able to take a deep breath without pain, and often feeling with gratified concern about what he deemed the lobe of his left lung, a good two inches below the waist-line. At other times, especially after swallowing countless cherry-stones for the delectation of two entranced country cousins, he decided that his threatened ailment was one of the heart, and against the
- ↑ Once, on going to visit his Grandmother Lomely for the first time, he had sought to overcome this drawback by walking with a persistent and pathetic limp, for one whole week of dissimulation wantonly and passionately adhering to the statement that he had been a lifelong sufferer from hip disease.
