David turned on Carol reproachfully.  “There you see!  That’s what comes of eating raw eggs.”  Then he added suspiciously, “Maybe you knew it before and have been enticing me to raw eggs on purpose.”

Both Carol and David seized this silly pretext to relieve their feelings, and laughed so heartily that good Mrs. Sater was quite concerned for them.  She had heard it sometimes affected folks like that,—­a great nervous or mental shock.  She looked at them very anxiously indeed.

“Are you selling your furniture pretty well?” she asked nervously.

“Oh, just fine.  Mr. Barker at the drug store has promised to fumigate everything after we are gone, so we won’t scatter any germs in our wake.”  Carol spoke hurriedly, her heart swelling with pity as she saw the sudden convulsive clutching of David’s hands beneath the covers.  “Mr. Daniels has a list of ‘who bought what,’ and will see that everything is delivered in good shape.  Only, we take the money ourselves in advance.  Now look at this chair, Mrs. Sater,—­a lovely chair,” she rattled, thinking wretchedly of that contraction of David’s hands and the darkening of his eyes.  “A splendid chair.  It isn’t sold yet.  It cost us eight seventy-five one year ago, and we are selling it for the mere pittance of five dollars even,—­we make it even because we haven’t any change.  A most beautiful chair, an article to grace any home, a constant reminder of us, a chair in which great men have sat,—­Mr. Daniels, and Mr. Baldwin, and the horrible gas collector who has made life wretched for every one in the Heights, and—­all for five dollars, Mrs. Sater.  Can you resist it?”

Carol’s voice took on a new ring as she saw the shadow leave David’s eyes, and his lips curve into laughter again.

“Well, I swan, Mrs. Duke, if you don’t beat all.  Yes, I’ll take that chair.  It may not be worth five dollars, but you are.”

Carol ostentatiously collected the five dollars, doubled it carefully into a tiny bit, and tied it in the corner of her handkerchief.

“My money, Mr. David Arnold Duke, and I shall buy candy and talcum with it.”

Then she ran into the adjoining room to answer the telephone.

Mrs. Sater looked about her hesitatingly and leaned forward.

“David,” she said in a low voice, “Carol ought to go home to her father.  It’s dangerous for her to stay with you.  Everybody says so.  Make her go home until you are well.  She may get it too if she goes along.  They’ll take good care of you at the Presbyterian hospital out there, you a minister and all.”

The laughter, the light, left David’s face at the first word.

“I know it,” he said in a heavy voice.  “I have told her to go home.  But she won’t even talk it over.  She gets angry if I mention it.  Every one tells me it is dangerous,—­but Carol won’t listen.”

“Just until you get well, you know.”

“I shall never get well unless she is with me.  But I am trying to send her away.  What can I do?  I can’t drive her off.”  His hands closed and then relaxed, lying helplessly on the covers.