The figures moved across the room and darkened the square of the
casement. Trevor laid very still; perhaps they would go away again if
he feigned sleep. He could hear them conversing softly, but couldn’t
distinguish their words because--because there was such a noise
outside! What was it? He could hear shouting and sometimes the blare
of a band. It must be at the front of the hotel. St. Eustace was
celebrating her victory probably, and Hillton’s defeat! He groaned and
tossed an arm despairingly. One of the figures turned and walked toward
him.
“Awake, Trevor?”
It was Dick’s voice. For a moment Trevor was silent; then he answered
with a sigh:
“Yes.”
The second figure came and leaned over him and he saw that it was Kirk.
“How are you feeling now, chum?” asked Dick, with all the old affection
in his voice. Trevor felt his eyes growing moist, and he had to gulp
twice before he could answer.
“All right, Dick; I think I can get up now.”
“Get up! Indeed, you’ll not. You’re to stay here to-night, and I’m
going to stay with you. The others are getting ready to go back now;
can you hear them?”
“Let’s see what the boy looks like,” said Kirk. “I’ll light the gas and
give him his medicine.”
“Don’t, please don’t!” cried Trevor. It was all so much easier in the
darkness.
“All right,” Kirk answered cheerfully. “I dare say it would hurt your
eyes. But here’s the stuff. Open your mouth.”
Trevor obeyed, and after several misadventures the medicine was
administered. Dick had seated himself on the side of the bed and had
taken one of the other lad’s hands in his own.
“Trevor.”
“Yes?”
“A length and a third, old chap!”
Trevor sighed, and then, “I--I suppose it might have been worse, Dick?”
“Worse?” cried Dick. “What are you talking about? Why, we’re awfully
proud of it, every one of us! Aren’t we, Mr. Kirk?”
“Yes, and we have good cause, I think. It was magnificent!”
“And, Trevor,” went on Dick in tones so full of happiness that Trevor
wondered, “all the fellows want you to hurry up and get well; and we
all cheered you at dinner till the plaster nearly fell on us!”
“Cheered me!” whispered Trevor. “Cheered me, Dick? Do you mean--do you
mean that they--that you all forgive me?”
“Forgive you? What for? Because you were the pluckiest of any of us and
did the brainiest sort of thing when you jumped overboard?”
“Because--oh, Dick, don’t you see? If I hadn’t been so bull-headed it
wouldn’t have happened; if I’d owned up that I wasn’t feeling well
you could have put another fellow in. But I heard Mr. Kirk telling
about some fellow who had the fever and how it left him at noon; and
I thought mine would, too; and so I went ahead, and--and it didn’t
go away, but got worse every minute; I was all silly in my head.
And--don’t you see, Dick, if I’d done right we wouldn’t have been
beaten?”
There was a moment’s silence. Then--
“He doesn’t know!” said Kirk softly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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