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That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." ffice ffice" />
$ r+ e' z' N) p' X" D Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
% y7 l8 n1 b7 g4 M One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow. 7 z7 W+ C; B5 S, z- g! O* S3 t
"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?" & T( L% y* G6 M
"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
7 A' k# E; s8 [ "Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"
5 O0 e. m2 z+ ]% p "A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." "Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the | 
发表于 2011-5-19 00:57:00
