y.
"Now, shut up--you're not to talk."

P. Walton was pretty sick. Nulty sat up all that night with him, laid
off from his run the next day, and sat up with P. Walton again the next
night. Then, having sent for Mrs. Nulty, who was visiting relatives
down the line, Mrs. Nulty took a hand in the nursing. Mrs. Nulty was a
little, sweet-faced woman, with gray Irish eyes and no style about
her--Nulty's pay-check didn't reach that far--but she knew how to
nurse; and if her hands were red and the knuckles a little swollen from
the washtub, she could use them with a touch that was full enough of
tender sympathy to discount anything a manicure might have reason to
find fault with on professional grounds. She didn't rate Nulty for
turning her home into a hospital, and crowding her train-sheet of work,
already pretty full, past all endurance--Mrs. Nulty, God bless her,
wasn't that kind of a woman! She looked at her husband with a sort of
happy pride in her eyes; looked at P. Walton, and said, "Poor man," as
her eyes filled--and went to work. But for all that, it was touch and
go with P. Walton--P. Walton was a pretty sick man.

It's queer the way trouble of that sort acts--down and out one day with
every signal in every block set dead against you; and the next day a
clear track, with rights through buttoned in your reefer, a wide-flung
throttle, and the sweep of the wind through the cab glass whipping your
face till you could yell with the mad joy of living. It's queer!

Five days saw P. Walton back at the office, as good, apparently, as
ever he was--but Mrs. Nulty didn't stop nursing. Nulty came down sick
in place of P. Walton and took to bed--"to give her a chance to keep
her hand in," Nulty said. Nulty came down, not from overdoing it on P.
Walton's account--a few nights sitting up wasn't enough to lay a man
like Nulty low--Nulty came down with a touch of just plain mountain
fever.

It wasn't serious, or anything like that; but it put a stop order,
temporarily at least, on the arrangements Nulty had cussed P. Walton
into agreeing to. P. Walton was to come and board with the Nultys at
the same figure he was paying Ivan Peloff until he got a raise and
could pay more. And so, while Nulty was running hot and cold with
mountain fever, P. Walton, with Mrs. Nulty in mind, kept his
reservations on down in the Polack quarters, until such time as Nulty
should get better--and went back to work at the office.

On the first