ck
drop of his voice: "Hold on, we mustn't talk so loud, we've got to be
quiet here, you know." He turned away from me restlessly. "I've been
hunting for hours for that damn book. Their cataloguing system here is
rotten, Kid, it's rotten!" As he spoke he was slowly feeling his way
along the dirty white wall of his room. "They've cheated us, Bill, I'm
on to 'em now! That's what college is really for these days, to hide the
books we ought to read!"

It came over me suddenly that Joe was back in college, on one of those
library evenings of ours. I felt a tightening at my throat.

"Say, Joe." I drew him toward the bed. "The chapel bell has just struck
ten. Time for beer and pretzels."

"Fine business! Gee, but I've got a thirst! But where's the door? God
damn it all--I can't find anything to-night!" He laughed unsteadily.

"Right over here," I answered. "Steady, old man----"

And so I got him to his bed. He fell down on it breathing hard and I
brought him a drink of water. He began to shiver violently. I covered
him up with dirty blankets, went down to the barroom and telephoned to
Eleanore. Too deeply disturbed to think very clearly, acting on an
impulse, I told her of Joe's condition and asked if I might bring him
home.

"Why of course," came the answer, a little sharp. "Wait a moment. Let me
think." There was a pause, and then she added quietly, "Go back to his
room and keep him in bed. I'll see that an ambulance comes right down."

Within an hour after that Joe was installed in our guest room with a
trained nurse to attend to him. The doctor pronounced it typhoid and he
was with us for nine weeks.

* * * * *

The effect upon our lives was sharp. In our small crowded apartment all
entertaining was suddenly stopped, and with the sole exception of Sue no
one came to see us. Even our little Indian learned to be quiet as a
mouse. Our whole home became intense.

Through the thin wall of my workroom I could hear Joe in his delirium.
Now he was busily writing letters, now in a harsh excited voice he was
talking to a crowd of men, again he was furiously shoveling coal. All
this was incoherent, only mutterings most of the time. But when the
voice rose suddenly it was so full of a stern pain, so quivering with
revolt against life, and it poured out such a torrent of commonplace
minute details that showed this was Joe's daily life and the deepest
part of his being--that as I listened at my