Lucy Crown Read Online Free PDF Page B

…” Lucy began.
    “Sam and I have talked all this out already, Lucy,” Oliver said, touching her hand.
    “What do I have to do now?” Tony asked, eyeing Patterson distrustfully.
    “You don’t have to do anything, Tony,” Patterson said. “I just want to tell you how things are with you.”
    “I feel fine.” Tony sounded sullen as he said this and he looked unhappily at the ground.
    “Of course,” Patterson said. “And you’re going to feel a lot better.”
    “I feel good enough,” Tony said stubbornly. “Why do I have to feel better?”
    Patterson and Oliver laughed at this, and, after a moment, Bunner joined in.
    “Well enough,” Lucy said. “Not good enough.”
    “Well enough,” Tony said obediently.
    “Of course you do,” Patterson began.
    “I don’t want to stop anything,” Tony said warningly. “I stopped enough things already in my life.”
    “Tony,” said Oliver, “let Dr. Patterson finish what he has to say.”
    “Yes, Sir,” said Tony.
    “All I want to tell you,” Patterson said, “is that you mustn’t try to read for a while yet, but aside from that, you can do almost anything you want—in moderation. Do you know what moderation means?”
    “It means not asking for a second ice-cream soda,” Tony said promptly.
    They all laughed at that and Tony looked around him, shrewdly, because he had known it was going to make them laugh.
    “Exactly,” Patterson said. “You can play tennis and you can swim and …”
    “I want to learn to play second base,” said Tony. “I want to learn to hit curves.”
    “We can try,” Bunner said, “but I don’t guarantee anything. I haven’t hit a curve yet and I’m a lot older than you. You’re either born hitting curves or you’re not.”
    “You can do all that, Tony,” Patterson went on, noting somewhere at the back of his mind that Bunner was a pessimist, “on one condition. And the condition is that as soon as you feel yourself getting the least bit tired, you quit. The least bit …”
    “And if I don’t quit?” the boy said sharply. “What happens then?”
    Patterson looked inquiringly at Oliver.
    “Go ahead and tell him,” Oliver said.
    Patterson shrugged and turned back to Tony. “Then you might have to go back to bed and stay there again for a long time. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
    “You mean I might die,” Tony said, ignoring the question.
    “Tony!” Lucy said. “Dr. Patterson didn’t say that.”
    Tony looked around him with hostility and Patterson had the impression, for a moment, that the boy was regarding the people who surrounded him not as his parents and friends, but as the instigators and the representatives of his illness.
    “Don’t worry,” Tony said. He smiled and the hostility vanished. “I won’t die.”
    “Of course not,” said Patterson, resenting Oliver for having put him through a scene like that. He took a step forward to the boy and leaned over him a little, coming closer to his level.
    “Tony,” he said, “I want to congratulate you.”
    “Why?” Tony asked, a little guardedly, suspecting teasing.
    “You’re a model patient,” Patterson said. “You recovered. Thank you.”
    “When can I throw away these?” Tony asked. He put his hand up with a quick movement and took off his glasses. His voice suddenly seemed mature and bitter. Without has glasses his eyes looked deepset, peering, full of melancholy and judgment, alarming in the thin, boyish face.
    “Maybe in a year or two,” Patterson said. “If you do the exercises every day. One hour each morning, one hour each night. Will you remember that?”
    “Yes, Sir,” Tony said. He put on the glasses and they made him seem boyish again.
    “Your mother knows all the exercises,” Patterson said, “and she’s promised she won’t skip a minute …”
    “You can show them to me, Doctor,” said Bunner, “and we can spare Mrs. Crown.”
    “There’s no need of that,” Lucy said quickly. “I’ll do