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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Tough luck, old man!" said Courtland, with a kindly hand on the bowed shoulder. "But maybe it's only a scare. Sometimes people get better when they're pretty sick, you know." Wittemore shook his head. "No. We've been expecting this, she and I. She's been sick a long time. I didn't want to come back this year! I thought she was failing! But she would have it!
He wondered what the gang would say when he told them about Wittemore! Poor Wittemore! He wasn't as nutty as they had thought! He had good in his heart! Courtland poured the tea, but the sugar-paper had proved quite empty when he found it; likewise a plate that had once contained butter. The toast and tea, however, seemed to be quite acceptable without its usual accessories.
Mother wouldn't want me to come to her, leaving a woman suffering like that when I'd promised. I only came up here to get car fare so I could get there sooner than walking. It took all the change I had to get the prescription filled." "Darn you, Wittemore! What do you think I am? I'll take the medicine to the old lady ten old ladies if necessary! You get your train! There's your suit-case.
If Wittemore would get back to his classes and plod off to his slums every day, with his long horse-like face and his scared little apologetic smile, why, perhaps his own mind would assume its normal bent and let him get at his work. And with that he sat down and wrote a letter to Wittemore, brief, sympathetic, inquiring, offering any help that might be required.
He could not tell why he had held out his hand and offered to take the message. It was not because he was not trying hard, and studying for all he was worth, that "Witless Abner," as Wittemore had come to be called, had won his nickname. He worked night and day, plunged in a maze of things he did not quite understand until long after the rest of the class had passed them.
He had a feeling that he would like to be the means of making them understand. He told them gradually about Wittemore; not as he might have told them directly after seeing him off, nor quite as he had expected to tell them. It was a little more full; it gave them a little kinder, keener insight into a character that they had hitherto almost entirely condemned and ignored. They did not laugh!
He felt half a grudge toward Wittemore for having let him in for all this. Poor Wittemore! By this time to-morrow night Wittemore might be doing this same service for his own mother! Death! Death! Death! Everywhere! It seemed as if everybody was dying! He made selections with a memory of the girl's beautiful, refined face. He chose simple things and everything all white.
It was a great source of question with Courtland afterward, just why it should have been he that happened to carry that telegram over to the West Dormitory to Wittemore, instead of any one of a dozen other fellows who were in the office when it arrived and might just as well have gone. Did anything in this world happen, he wondered?
So he plunged forward into the dusk and swung himself on board a down-town car. He had no small trouble in finding the street, or rather court, in which the old woman lived. He stumbled up the narrow staircase, lighting matches as he went, for the place was dark as midnight. By the time he had climbed four flights he was wondering what in thunder Wittemore came to places like this for?
She'd got her heart so set on my graduating!" "Well, cheer up!" said Courtland, breezily. "Very likely your coming will help her to rally again! What train do you want to get? Can I help you any?" Wittemore lifted his head and looked about his room helplessly. It was plain he was dazed.
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