Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/32

14 "Maybe a whole lot shorter. I think that's the limit."

There was the situation: Dan Failing had but six months to live. Of course, the doctor said, if he had the money he could go to a sanitarium. But he had spoken entirely hopelessly. Besides, Dan did n't have the money. He pushed all thought of sanitariums out of his mind. Instead, he began to wonder whether his mother had been entirely wise in her effort to keep him from the "rough games" of the boys of his own age. He realized now that he had been an under-weight all his life,—that the frailty that had thrust him to the edge of the grave had begun in his earliest boyhood. But it wasn't that he was born with physical handicaps. He had weighed a full ten pounds; and the doctor had told his father that a sturdier little chap was not to be found in any maternity bed in the whole city. But his mother was convinced that the child was delicate and must be sheltered. Never in all the history of his family, so far as Dan knew, had there been a death from the malady that afflicted him. Yet his sentence was signed and sealed.

But he harbored no resentment against his mother. It was all in the game. She had done what she thought was best. And he be-