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.”  This might as well have been left unsent, for I tore it up and assured the waiting pair that no news was good news.  They tried eagerly to believe this aphorism, which has the authority of age, but which I suspect was coined originally from despair.

The next day’s bulletin read “Temperature still up, but making a strong fight.”  Stupid it was, when these were but eight words, not to have added two more, such as, “Very hopeful.”  I induced our telegraph operator to rectify this oversight, and felt repaid for my trouble when I showed the message.  That last touch seemed to have been needed.  Of course Little Miss would make a strong fight.  Miss Caroline and Clem both knew that.  But they had known other strong fights to be none the less hopeless, and they were grateful for those last two words of qualification.

There were four other days when the report seemed to need judicious editing, and in this I did not prove remiss.  As the telegraph company remained indifferent, I could see that no harm was done.  For at last came a bulletin of seventeen words which left us assured that Little Miss had conquered.  Henceforth we could receive the things without that stifling dread, that eager fearfulness of the eyes to read all the words in one glance.  Leisurely could we learn that Little Miss was getting back her strength, and Miss Caroline and I could laugh at Clem’s fear that she also would find herself “pah’lyzed in th’ frame.”

After that Miss Caroline and I were free to consider another matter, weighty enough with pneumonia out of the running.  This was a matter of ways and means—­of sheer, downright money.

When Clem, in the first days of his sickness, had warned Miss Caroline that she would not be let to waste “all that gold money,” his lofty reference, as a matter of cold figures, was to a sum less than nine dollars.  I forget the precise amount, but that is near enough—­nine dollars, in round numbers.  And the winter had been an expensive one.

At the lowest time of doubt, when Miss Caroline had affairs of extreme gravity to face, I had spoken to her incidentally of money that I owed to Clem for services performed, and I had, in fact, paid several instalments of the debt as money seemed to be needed.

When Clem’s recovery was assured and I urged Miss Caroline to go to Little Miss, she asked me bluntly what sum I had owed Clem.  I felt obliged to confess that it was not more than two hundred dollars.