About this time Martin was making Bob Newhall’s life a burden to him by solicitous inquiries regarding his health. Martin had a way of observing Bob anxiously and attempting to feel his pulse that the latter found very trying. Of course Bob could refuse to have his heart action investigated, and could--and did--decline to put out his tongue for Martin to inspect, but he couldn’t prevent Martin from eyeing him narrowly on all occasions and shaking his head sorrowfully over what he pretended to believe were the ravages of disease. “I don’t like those deep circles under your eyes, Bob,” Martin would say gravely. “Sleep pretty well, do you?” “About nine hours, thanks,” Bob would reply shortly. “I was afraid of that! That’s one of the unmistakable symptoms. Feel tired in the morning? Sort of worried and oppressed without knowing why?” “Not until I run across you! And then I know why blamed well!” “Irritable, too! Dear, dear! Bob, why don’t you drop in at the doctor’s some day and just let him look you over? Of course there may be nothing serious, nothing that can’t be remedied if taken in time, but I’d feel a lot easier about you if you saw someone, honest I would!” “You’ll feel easier if I hand you a wallop,” growled Bob. “Say, if you played guard half as hard as you work that silly tongue of yours you might amount to something!” Martin spent a whole hour in the library one morning and emerged with a fine fund of information regarding the sleeping sickness and the ravages of the tse-tse fly, and after that he became doubly obnoxious to Bob. Martin may or may not have been correct in connecting the bite of the tse-tse with the sleeping sickness, but the way in which he drove the flies away from Bob’s vicinity proved that he meant to take no chances. Strangely, the object of his solicitous care resented this manifestation of it more than any other, and Martin had only to fix a piercing gaze on the tip of Bob’s nose and begin a cautious approach with uplifted hand to throw Bob into a paroxysm of lamentable anger. Martin, repulsed, would explain in hurt tones that never having seen the tse-tse fly he couldn’t be supposed to know it from the common or house-fly, and that he consequently was using only excusable caution. Naturally enough, Willard and Joe enjoyed the nonsense and egged Martin on, but when the latter began flooding Bob’s mail with patent medicine circulars and stories of miraculous cures clipped from the newspapers, Bob’s patience became exhausted and he vowed revenge. “I’m going to get good and even with you, Mart,” he declared one afternoon when Martin had drawn his attention to an advertisement extolling the merits of a net to be worn over the head to the utter confusion of mosquitoes and flies. “When I get through with you, my humorous young friend, you won’t know there’s such a word as ‘fly’ in the English language. And you’ll be good and sick yourself, believe me!”