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"It sounds better when you just play the music," Bert said, and laughed at his father's look of comic dismay. As for Mr. Quinby, he had succeeded in arousing the boy's spirits and he put the instrument down. Bert walked over to the window. The rain had ceased, the stars were out, and the night seemed to hold a greater peace.

All the boy's interests for the next five days centered on a doctor's house set down among towering maple trees in the heart of the town. He found that each morning Dr. Elman motored to the hospital. Leaning against the trunk of one of the trees he would watch the road and wait; sometimes on a rising tide of hope, sometimes in the cold clutch of a great fear. Usually, about noon, the doctor's dusty car would roll up to the curb and stop. Bert, edging away from the tree, would grip his courage as the man came up the walk.

"How's Bill?" he would ask.

"He's holding his own," the doctor would answer. He was a gruff man, not given to wasting words.

On the sixth day the report varied.

"He'll pull through," Dr. Elman said. "Youth—good constitution."