Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/39

Rh of it. Somehow he came back for the bag, and took it away, and the door shut, and I turned round to the wall and fell into a doze.

The next morning I lay still. When Mother McCarthy came her rounds at about half-past eight to see who'd skipped 'first lesson,' she recognised the fact that I had scarlet fever. I didn't care much.

I was put into hospital, and the days passed dimly. But, on the seventh or eighth morning, when the rash was all but gone. Mother McCarthy told me as she brought in my breakfast, that 'Mr. Clayton had taken it.' That set me off laughing: not that I wanted him to have it (I did not care a jot about him one way or the other), but it struck me as not bad sport in the abstract, that Clayton should have it and be cooped up here with me.

They soon got him into bed, wrapped up in flannels and the rest of it. I couldn't help laughing to see his face, so elongated, as solemn as if at the celebration of a rite. The idea of what he would look like later on, red all over and his tongue like a white strawberry, quite overcame me. I believe he thought he was not far from death. He closed his eyes with a resignation that was not without sweetness and his lips moved, as if in prayer, I thought. Such a fit of laughter came into me that I had to stuff a piece of the sheet into my mouth. I ended by being rather ashamed of myself.

But later on he cheered up amazingly. His attack was a slight one. Despite my eight days' start he was convalescent before me; for one night I, impatient at my itching hide, got out of bed and took to stalking up and down the length of the room in my nightshirt, despite his assurances that I should catch cold and have dropsy and inflammation of the kidneys and the brain, with convulsions, and God knows what besides. Sure enough I did get something rheumatic in my joints and I was told by the doctor that some inflammation of the eyes I had had not been improved by a chill I must have taken somehow. I kept silence, and made the best of it.

Later on, one day when my eyes were still too weak to see to read well, Clayton insisted on reading aloud