oo long. The past
stood at their elbow like an importunate and shabby ghost. And yet it
was all they had to lead them back into the old intimacy.
"We've got too much to say," Cosgrave broke out at last, with a painful
effort, "too much ground to cover--and I dare say we don't want to cover
it. If we'd written--but I never heard from you after that one
letter--after Miss Christine's death."
"I was ill," Stonehouse explained, eating tranquilly. "I got through my
finals with a temperature which would have astonished my examiners, and
then I went to pieces altogether. Had to go into hospital myself. A
nervous breakdown. Three months I had of it. They were very decent to
me, and when I came out they got me a berth as ship's doctor on one of
the smaller transatlantic liners. I got hold of things again and pulled
them my way. But I didn't want to look back. My illness had made a
definite break--I wanted to keep free."
Cosgrave nodded. He had been playing with his food, and now a look of
disgust and weariness came into his thin face.
"I can understand that. I suppose it would have been better if I'd left
well alone, and not written at all."
"It wouldn't have made much difference," Stonehouse said: "A week or two.
Sooner or later we'd have run into one another. People who've been at
school together always seem to. And you and I especially."
"I don't know. I was always a poor specimen--I never meant much to you."
Stonehouse looked up at him and smiled. This time it was an unmistakable
smile and rather charming, like a warm line of light falling across his
face.
"I was awfully glad to get your letter," he said. "I'd begun to worry
rather."
Cosgrave flushed up.
"That's--that's about the nicest thing that's happened to me for a long
time. I'd probably cry with pleasure--only I don't seem able to feel
much anyway. It's those damn bugs, I suppose!"
"I'll pull you out of that."
"Got me diagnosed already?"
"It's not very difficult."
"I suppose--I suppose you're an awful swell, Stonehouse."
"Not yet. I'm better at my job than a great many men who are swells.
But I'm young--that'll cure itself. Oh, yes--I'm all right. Things have
gone on coming my way. I'll tell you about it sometime."
Cosgrave's eyes had rounded with their old solemn admiration.
"A fashionable West-End surgeon--oh, my word! I say, have you got a
bed-side manner tucked away somewhere?"
"No. That's not fash
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