"But how's the book coming on?" he asked suddenly, sitting up and fixing Wardwell with a sharp, steady appraisal that Jimmie could almost feel physically. "Rotten!" said Jimmie, annoyed and sullen, though he did not know why. "But how did you know--?" "Oh, Augusta was telling me something the other day, about your walking the floor, and--one thing and another. Come inside here a moment," the doctor commanded, rising brusquely and walking to the door of his inner office. As Wardwell closed the double baize-lined, sound-proof doors of the little consulting room behind him he felt a sickening assurance that he was going to hear bad news. But he was mainly irritated and angry with himself because he now knew that he had been giving Augusta additional worry. A half hour later he was listening restlessly to Doctor Gardner's explanations about 'filtration in the upper right lobe' and 'weakening of the walls' and gathering in a general way that he was well on the way to being a consumptive. He was telling himself quietly that he did not believe a word of it, that if he could just once strike his stride on a good little story he would be all right in a week. Finally the doctor prescribed. "You will have to get out of the city at once. Just walk out, don't fuss about it, and go south somewhere, where you can stay out in the open and just lie around and eat and sleep. Don't take work with you, and don't let it follow you. Just walk out and drop everything but the business of saving your life. That's just what I mean, young man. I have not concealed anything from you. And--I'm not exaggerating anything. You must do this _now_, tomorrow." Saying nothing, Wardwell rose to go. Inwardly he was grumbling to himself that it was always easy for the other fellow to tell you to drop everything and walk away. But he knew that he could not be churlish. The doctor was probably right and certainly he was honest and friendly. They shook hands in silence, and the doctor, used to seeing people take their news in all sorts of ways, let him go without another word. Augusta had once said that Jimmie sometimes was not quite grown up. Outside in the street he proved it. He turned deliberately and looking up at Doctor Gardner's window, much after the manner of a boy sticking out his tongue in defiance, he said aloud: "You can go to the devil. I wouldn't leave Augusta now, not to save ten lives." As an afterthought, before reaching home, he went into a drug store and called the doctor on the telephone. He warned him truculently: "Tell her my nerves are bad, that's true enough. Tell her any tale you like. But don't tell her--what you've just told me. I won't have Augusta worried now." He would not expect to hide it long from Augusta, if there was anything seriously wrong with him. She always knew the truth, somehow. But he did not believe literally what the doctor had told him, and he was confident that things could drift on as they were.