Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/180

168 ments were so widely different, that he suddenly changed his mind, and ordered the flowers to be sent to his sister-in-law, who was just then in town. When he walked away from the florist's he looked rather ashamed of himself and of his burst of sentiment. But what did he want to send her flowers for? He wanted to see her, to take her hands in his and look down deep into those beautiful gray eyes and say—perhaps not say anything. She and he understood.

He made up his mind that he would go on the morrow, and on this decision he went to sleep with a light heart. In the morning he was awakened by a messenger to say that his brother Mortimer had returned from the country seriously ill. He was at the house on Pacific Avenue inside an hour. Mortimer had come home a week before with a bad cold which had developed into a dangerous case of pneumonia. Maud Gault was helpless and distracted. Her brother-in-law spent the day in attending to the numerous duties which crop up with sickness, and in the evening telegraphed for Letitia.

For the four following days Mortimer Gault hung between life and death, brooded over by a frantic wife, three doctors, two nurses, a fond sister-in-law, and an extremely anxious brother. The tie between the two men was very close—John had never realized how close till those