"Do you think you would--care to join me,
sir?"
They had been friends for close to forty years, not because of common
tastes, but in spite of innate dissimilarity. Dexter came to his feet;
he reached out and crushed the other man's hand within his soft, white
fingers. Nor was his reply quite according to formula.
"I don't mind if I do, Cal," he accepted fervidly, "Thank God . . . I
don't mind if I do!"
Arm in arm, they recrossed to the white-columned house. And they kept
close, each to the other, throughout the hours of suspense that
followed, finding a potent though unconfessed reassurance in such
companionship.
Delirium came again upon the sick man who lay in the room which Miss
Sarah had always kept waiting for him. Fever strode upon him, while
the girl who had brought him home slept in complete exhaustion. At
times Steve lay quiescent, only muttering fitfully; the next moment he
called crisply for Fat Joe--he feared for his bridge--and Joe had to
exert every iron muscle to hold him down. And always he spoke
Barbara's name, with a poignant gentleness that left Miss Sarah on the
verge of collapse. But he continued to live, through that day and the
next night, even when the doctor shook his head and Fat Joe rose to go
for the girl, as he had promised he would, in the last extremity. He
continued to live, and with the coming of the second dawn suddenly he
was no longer delirious.
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