David was enjoying his holiday. He lay in bed most of the morning,
making the most of his one after-breakfast cigar and surrounded by
newspaper and magazines. He had made friends of the waiter who brought
his breakfast, and of the little chambermaid who looked after his room,
and such conversations as this would follow: "Well, Nellie," he would say, "and did you go to the dance on the pier
last night?"
"Oh, yes, doctor."
"Your gentleman friend showed up all right, then?"
"Oh, yes. He didn't telephone because he was on a job out of town."
Here perhaps David would lower his voice, for Lucy was never far away.
"Did you wear the flowers?"
"Yes, violets. I put one away to remember you by. It was funny at first.
I wouldn't tell him who gave them to me."
David would chuckle delightedly.
"That's right," he would say. "Keep him guessing, the young rascal. We
men are kittle cattle, Nellie, kittle cattle!"
Even the valet unbent to him, and inquired if the doctor needed a man at
home to look after him and his clothes. David was enormously tickled.
"Well," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll tell you how I manage
now, and then you'll see. When I want my trousers pressed I send them
downstairs and then I wait in my bathrobe until they come back. I'm a
trifle better off for boots, but you'd have to knock Mike, my hired man,
unconscious before he'd let you touch them."
The valet grinned understandingly.
"Of course, there's my nephew," David went on, a little note of pride in
his voice. "He's become engaged recently, and I notice he's bought some
clothes. But still I don't think even he will want anybody to hold his
trousers while he gets into them."
David chuckled over that for a long time after the valet had gone.
He was quite happy and contented. He spent all afternoon in a roller
chair, conversing affably with the man who pushed him, and now and
then when Lucy was out of sight getting out and stretching his legs. He
picked up lost children and lonely dogs, and tried his eye in a shooting
gallery, and had hard work keeping off the roller coasters and out of
the sea.
Then, one day, when he had been gone some time, he was astonished on
entering his hotel to find Harrison Miller sitting in the lobby. David
beamed with surprise and pleasure.