The Hookin'-Cough Manb

"Well, how am I going to doctor you and feed you and make you all comfy, with one hand?" asked Billy Louise with quavering flippancy.

"Kiss me!"

"Ah--might catch the hookin'-cough," bantered Billy Louise, leaning a bit closer.

"Kiss me!"

"Oh, well, I s'pose sick folks have to be humored." Billy Louise leaned closer still. "Mighty few kissy places left," she observed with the same shaky flippancy, a minute later. "Say, Ward, you look for all the world like old Sourdough Williams!" Sourdough Williams, it may be remarked, was a particularly hairy and unkempt individual who lived a more or less nomadic life in the hills, trapping.

"You look like--" Ward groped foggily for a simile. Angel was altogether too commonplace.

"Like the lady who's going to get busy right now, making you well. What have you been doing to yourself? Never mind; I don't want you talking yourself crazy again. Do you know you tried to shoot me up when I came in? And you made me start in to write a record of my sins. But that's all right, seeing you've got the hookin'-cough, I'll forgive you this once. Lie still--and let go my hand. I want to put a wet cloth on your head."

"Did I--"

"You did; and then some. Forget it. You've got a terrible cold; and from the looks of things, you've had it for about six months." Her eyes went comprehensively about that end of the cabin, with the depleted cracker-box, the half-emptied boxes of peaches and tomatoes, and the buckets that were all but empty of water. She was shocked at the pitiful evidence of long helplessness. She did not quite understand. Surely Ward's cold had not kept him in bed so long.