‘Don’t be so silly!’

‘Comrade Sara been hinting I’m losing grip — unable to see smart decorator’s shop as an investment?’

‘Well, she is a little worried. So am I!’

‘What’s the matter with old Fred?’

‘You know you don’t sleep right.’

‘If I can get along without sleep — and all through the ages people been kicking because that’s the worst waste of time there is — then I must be in swell shape!’

‘I wish you would have Lafe Kamerkink look you over. Please do.’

‘All right. I will.’

‘When?’

‘Next Saturday.’

‘I’ll be hanged!’ she said, unprophetically but with the most gratifying astonishment.

After the usual assaults and embarrassments which doctors call an examination, Dr. Kamerkink illustrated the advance of medicine, and proved that he had kept up, by grunting:

‘You’ll have to take a basal-metabolism test, and I want a blood count.’

‘All right.’

Kamerkink looked suspicious. He was certain that Fred had something up his sleeve.

‘I said I want a B.M.R.’

‘Whatever it is, I’m for it.’

‘For a B.M.R., I want to have it taken after twelve-fourteen hours’ complete rest, without food and even without your smoking a cigarette.’

‘O.K.’

‘I wouldn’t trust you to do that at home.’

‘Neither would I.’

‘So you’ll have to spend a night in a hospital.’

‘O.K.’

Dr. Kamerkink was overwhelmed. Was Fred concealing a flask, or drugs, or a revolver? Never in these years of acquaintanceship had Fred given him any reason to suppose that he could be so abnormal as to act like a sane and normal patient. Doubtfully, wondering when he would find the trick in it, Dr. Kamerkink telephoned to engage Fred’s room in the hospital and lighted a cigarette, prefatory to telling Fred about cutting down the cigarettes.

Fred liked his hospital room. He had declined Hazel’s company and all offers of flowers and depressingly cheerful bedside books. It was refreshing to have, without the penalty of pain, this simple room that was pictureless, pinkless and candlewick-spreadless, and that falsely seemed to get itself cleaned with none of the horrors of hiring maids, seeing that they were transported to the movies and otherwise entertained, and listening to the whine of their vacuum cleaners. The better rooms in heaven must be automatic cells like this, he thought.

They did let him undress himself and get into his fine small high bed without tender helping hands. The one thing he had feared, in contemplating this adventure, had been that with mocking jeers some pretty young nurse would snatch his protective clothes away and show him up as just a skinned rabbit. But he certainly had no intention, he assured himself, of missing any of his opportunity to be waited on.

Hazel was fond enough of him, but Hazel wouldn’t think at all well of bringing him cooling fruit juices all evening, and extra pillows, of smoothing the bedclothes if he was such a fool as to keep on violently turning over, or of listening to his oldest jokes, as did the floor nurse who — usually — answered the bell this evening.