“They certainly won’t operate right away, Clara says,” Mabel returned. “They think her heart is too weak to stand the ordeal just now. Dr. Reeves is going to put her through a special course of treatment, and he thinks that in a month or two she will be ready.”
“My poor mother!” groaned Joe. “How can I go on playing ball with that thing in prospect? I got a letter from mother a day or two ago,” he added, feeling in the pocket of his coat for the note from home. “She didn’t say anything about any trouble then.”
“Of course she wouldn’t, you old silly,” said Mabel, gently. “Don’t you know that mothers always worry about everybody else but themselves? Mother Matson never would take her illness seriously, you know, and if she had she would have been the very last one to worry you with it. It was Clara, not your mother, who decided you ought to be told now and asked me to do it.”
“That sure is tough luck, Joe,” said Jim, gravely. “I had no idea your mother was as sick as that.”
“But, I say, don’t pull such a long face over it, old chap,” urged Reggie, trying to strike a cheerful note in the general gloom of the place. “People are operated on, you know, some of them again and again, and come up smilin’ in the end. It’s a bally shame and all that, but no need giving up hope altogether, you know. Hope on, hope ever, as the poet sings. Now, I knew of a person once who had a complication of diseases--most distressin’--and the doctors insisted that there must be an operation. But when the day came for the operation, old chap, they found----”
“Spare me the details, will you, Reggie?” urged Joe. “I can’t go them just now.”
“Certainly, old chap, certainly,” agreed Reggie, with swift compunction. “I might have known the subject would be, well, distasteful to you. To change the topic of conversation, just cast your eye for a moment in the direction of our old friend, Jim. He is dyin’ to learn more about Clara, you know, and can’t for the life of him decide how to tell you about it. How about it, old chap? Am I right?” Saying this, he tapped Jim playfully with his monocle, and the latter reluctantly smiled.
“You sure are a mind reader, old boy,” he said. “I must confess that a little first-hand news of Clara would be welcome, and Mabel’s seen her since I have.”