I'll close the door for you. Do it hard! Call him a
damned black hound, if you please, and ask him what he means by it!"
I hurried in, for Miss Caroline's eyes were threatening to betray her.
CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH SOMETHING MUST BE DONE
Clem's prolonged convalescence was a trial to his militant spirit. The
month or more of curious weakness in his body, always before so stout,
left him with a fear that he had been "pah'lyzed in th' frame."
Moreover, there were troubles less intimately personal to him, but not
less harassing to the household.
There was Little Miss, who was making a fight like Clem's own in a
Baltimore hospital. Each day I bore to Miss Caroline a telegram
detailing the progress of her daughter, though it had cost me time and
trouble to convince my correspondent that he was not to skimp such
encouragement as might be his to offer, merely to comprise it within ten
words. There were three days, it is true, when ten words were more than
enough in which to be non-committal. And there was a day that came upon
the heels of these when the profits of the telegraph company must have
been unusual, for only two words came instead of ten--"Recovery
doubtful.
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