The next afternoon--examinations were about over and Tom had returned to the store directly after lunch--he was called to the telephone. It was a neighbour of Uncle Israel’s speaking. Aunt Patty had asked her to tell Tom that his uncle was very ill and to say that he had better come home. Tom caught a train at a few minutes past four and went out to Derry. Uncle Israel had caught cold a day or two before and was pretty sick, Aunt Patty explained anxiously. The doctor came soon after Tom arrived and was not very encouraging. It was lung congestion, he said, and Mr. Bowles was a very ill man. Whether pneumonia would result he wouldn’t predict. Aunt Patty took full command of the situation, a neighbour came in to cook, and Tom and John Green sat down to a very cheerless supper. Friday morning Uncle Israel was rather worse than better, and Tom, remembering that he was to accompany the baseball team to Petersburg the next day, considered calling up Mr. Talbot on the telephone and reporting the situation. But the nearest telephone was at a neighbour’s house, a full half-mile distant--Uncle Israel had always refused to have anything to do with such a silly contraption--and Tom decided to wait until morning. He had already informed Mr. Cummings that he would not be back for a day or two. Saturday morning, after an anxious night of it, Uncle Israel’s condition was improved and when, at about eleven o’clock, the doctor arrived he declared that all danger was passed and that careful nursing and proper diet would bring the patient around as well as ever. Tom talked it over with Aunt Patty, and Aunt Patty said he had better go back. “Sakes alive,” she said, “there ain’t anything you can do here, Tom. If a man’s needed, why, there’s John; not that I’m pretending he’s much use, though!” (This for the benefit of the hired man who had just stamped in with fire-wood and who only grinned and winked at Tom.) “Just you run along and play your games, Tom. You’ll come back again to-night, anyway, I s’pose?”