like it."

He kind of shuddered and turned to Leonidas. "You are certain that those men will not return, are you?" says he.

"Not before to-morrow at ten. You can be out then, you know," says Mr. Dodge.

"To-morrow at ten!" says Homer, and slumps again, all in a heap. "Oh, this is awful!" he groans. "I couldn't survive another!"

It was the worst case of funk I ever saw. We put in an hour trying to brace him up, but not until we'd promised to stay by over night could we get him to breathe deep. Then he was as grateful as if we'd pulled him out of the river. We half lugs him over to the elevator and takes him up to his quarters. It wasn't any cheap hang-out, either—nothing but silk rugs on the floor and parlor furniture all over the shop. We had dinner served up there, and it was a feed to dream about—oysters, ruddy duck, filly of beef with mushrooms, and all the frills—while Homer worries along on a few toasted crackers and a cup of weak tea.

As Leonidas and me does the anti-famine act Homer unloads his hard-luck wheeze. He was the best example of an all-round invalid I ever stacked up against. He didn't go in for no half-way business; it was neck or nothing with him. He wasn't on the hospital list one day and bumping the bumps the next. He was what you might call a consistent sufferer.

"It's my heart mostly," says he. "I think there's a leak in one of the valves. The doctors lay it to nerves, some of them, but I'm certain about the leak."

"Why not call in a plumber?" says I.

But you couldn't chirk him up that way. He'd believed in that leaky heart of his for years. It was his stock in trade. As near as I could make out he'd began being an invalid about the time he should have been hunting a job, and he'd always had some one to back him up in it until about two months before we met him. First it was his mother, and when she gave out his old maid sister took her turn. Her name was Joyphena. He told us all about her; how she used to fan him when he was hot, wrap him up when he was cold, and read to him when she couldn't think of anything else to do. But one day Joyphena was thoughtless enough to go off somewhere and quit living. You could see that Homer wouldn't ever quite forgive her for that.

It was when Homer tried to find a substitute for Joyphena that his troubles began. He'd had all kinds of nurses, but the good ones wouldn't 

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