“You’re all right,” he decided, “except that you’re an ass.  Take your medical man’s word for it—­you’re an ass.  My prescription is ‘Cease to be lunatic three times daily and after eating.’  My fee’ll be a guinea, please.”

I said nothing, but looked at him for further advice.

“Confound you!  Don’t look at me with those Jeremiad eyes.  What have you been doing, moping indoors for the last ten days instead of playing in the fresh air?”

“I wasn’t moping—­” I began sullenly.

“Now, sulky—­sulky!” interrupted Chappy.

“I wasn’t moping.  I went and got a thousand lines from Mr. Fillet—­”

“Yes, I know.  The damned old stinker!” said Chappy, always coarse and delightful.

I think I loved him for those words.  I felt that my allies were swinging into line for the great war against Carpet Slippers.  There was Doe, and now Chappy.

“I know all about it,” continued the new ally, “and then you filled your excitable mind with thoughts of revenge—­eh?”

“Yes,” I admitted, and looked down at the clean white sheet.

“And off you go on your midnight perambulations—­the cold wakes you up—­and there’s the devil to pay—­and the old doctor to pay!  One guinea, please.  And now I’m off.”

“Oh, don’t go,” I pleaded, before I was aware of saying it.  I didn’t want him to go, for he was an entertaining apothecary and a sympathetic person, before whom I could act my sullenness and aggrievement.

“Don’t go?  Why shouldn’t I?” demanded Chappy, who seemed, however, touched at my wanting him.  “Now, my son, don’t you run away with the idea that you’re of the slightest importance.  All boys are the most useless, burdensome, and expensive animals in the world.  It wouldn’t matter twopence if they were all wiped out of existence—­there’d be a sigh of relief.  So don’t think it interesting that you’re ill.  Because it isn’t.  And you ain’t ill.  So good-bye.”

He disappeared into the matron’s room next door, and his hearty voice could be heard haranguing the lady: 

“The Gem’s got a healthy young constitution, but his brain’s a ticklish instrument.  His corpore is as sano as you like, but his mens is rather too excitabilis.  Ah ha!  Matron, what it is to move in this classic atmosphere!  Certain sproutings of his imagination must be repressed—­push ’em down, Matron.  Young beggar, I’d sit on him and crush him.  But then, it’s all the fault of that stuttering old barbarian slave-driver, Fillet.”

Here the matron must have been speaking, for I heard no more till Chappy began again: 

“He’s got a tough little breast, fine stomach-muscles, and limbs firm and round enough to get him a prize in a Boy Show.  But the beast is spoiled as a specimen by his little Vesuvius of a mind.  And oh, Matron, I lied to him like an under-secretary.  I said that boys were the least important arrangements in the world, when, dammit—­I mean, God bless my soul—­they’re the most important things in Creation, and this particular hotbed of the vermin has some of the finest editions of them all.  But never let the little blades know it—­never let ’em know it.”