"Fire away then," said Nance. "I'm it. I've come to hand you out a nice little bunch of advice."
"You needn't. I've got twice as much now as I intend to use. Come on around here and be sociable. I want to make love to you."
"Has Dr. Adair put you wise on what he's letting you in for?"
"Rather! Raw eggs, rest, and rust. Mother put him up to it. It's perfect rot. I'll be feeling fit as a fiddle inside of two weeks. All I need is to get out of this hole. They couldn't have kept me here this long if it hadn't been for you."
"And I reckon you're counting on going back and speeding up just as you did before?"
"Because you can't. The sooner you soak that in, the better."
He blew a succession of smoke rings in her direction and laughed.
"So they've taken you into the conspiracy, have they? Going to frighten me into the straight and narrow, eh? Suppose I tell them that I'm lovesick? That there's only one cure for me in the world, and that's you?"
The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up at her with the same irresponsible light in his brown eyes, the same eager desire to sidestep the disagreeable, the old refusal to accept life seriously. He was such a boy despite his twenty-six years. Such a spoiled, selfish lovable boy!
With a sudden rush of pity, she went to him and took his hand:
"See here, Mr. Mac," she said very gravely, "I got to tell you something. Dr. Adair wanted to tell you from the first, but your mother headed him off."
Then Nance sat on the side of his bed and explained to him, as gently and as firmly as she could, the very serious nature of his illness, emphasizing the fact that his one chance for recovery lay in complete surrender to a long and rigorous regime of treatment.
From scoffing incredulity, he passed to anxious skepticism and then to agonized conviction. It was the first time he had ever faced any disagreeable fact in life from which there was no appeal, and he cried out in passionate protest. If he was a "lunger" he wanted to die as soon as possible. He hated those wheezy chaps that went coughing through life, avoiding draughts, and trying to keep their feet dry. If he was going to die, he wanted to do it with a rush. He'd be hanged if he'd cut out smoking, drinking, and running with the boys, just to lie on his back for a year and perhaps die at the end of it!