We all run in classes.
You do.
I'm merely accepting the logic of the situation."
"The logic of your grandmother!
Do you call a butler and doorman in red velvet a part of the necessity of the occasion?"
"I certainly do," she replied.
"Maybe not the necessity exactly, but the spirit surely.
Why should you quarrel?
You're the first one to insist on perfection—to quarrel if there is any flaw in the order of things."
"You never heard me quarrel."
"Oh, I don't mean that literally.
But you demand perfection—the exact spirit of the occasion, and you know it."
"Maybe I do, but what has that to do with your democracy?"
"I am democratic.
I insist on it.
I'm as democratic in spirit as any woman.
Only I see things as they are, and conform as much as possible for comfort's sake, and so do you.
Don't you throw rocks at my glass house, Mister Master.
Yours is so transparent I can see every move you make inside."
"I'm democratic and you're not," he teased; but he approved thoroughly of everything she did.
She was, he sometimes fancied, a better executive in her world than he was in his.
Drifting in this fashion, wining, dining, drinking the waters of this curative spring and that, traveling in luxurious ease and taking no physical exercise, finally altered his body from a vigorous, quick-moving, well-balanced organism into one where plethora of substance was clogging every essential function.
His liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas—every organ, in fact—had been overtaxed for some time to keep up the process of digestion and elimination.
In the past seven years he had become uncomfortably heavy.
His kidneys were weak, and so were the arteries of his brain.
By dieting, proper exercise, the right mental attitude, he might have lived to be eighty or ninety.
As a matter of fact, he was allowing himself to drift into a physical state in which even a slight malady might prove dangerous.
The result was inevitable, and it came.
It so happened that he and Letty had gone to the North Cape on a cruise with a party of friends.
Lester, in order to attend to some important business, decided to return to Chicago late in November; he arranged to have his wife meet him in New York just before the Christmas holidays.
He wrote Watson to expect him, and engaged rooms at the Auditorium, for he had sold the Chicago residence some two years before and was now living permanently in New York.
One late November day, after having attended to a number of details and cleared up his affairs very materially, Lester was seized with what the doctor who was called to attend him described as a cold in the intestines—a disturbance usually symptomatic of some other weakness, either of the blood or of some organ.
He suffered great pain, and the usual remedies in that case were applied.
There were bandages of red flannel with a mustard dressing, and specifics were also administered.
He experienced some relief, but he was troubled with a sense of impending disaster.
He had Watson cable his wife—there was nothing serious about it, but he was ill.
A trained nurse was in attendance and his valet stood guard at the door to prevent annoyance of any kind.
It was plain that Letty could not reach Chicago under three weeks. He had the feeling that he would not see her again.
Curiously enough, not only because he was in Chicago, but because he had never been spiritually separated from Jennie, he was thinking about her constantly at this time. He had intended to go out and see her just as soon as he was through with his business engagements and before he left the city.
He had asked Watson how she was getting along, and had been informed that everything was well with her. She was living quietly and looking in good health, so Watson said.
Lester wished he could see her.
This thought grew as the days passed and he grew no better.
He was suffering from time to time with severe attacks of griping pains that seemed to tie his viscera into knots, and left him very weak.
Several times the physician administered cocaine with a needle in order to relieve him of useless pain.
After one of the severe attacks he called Watson to his side, told him to send the nurse away, and then said:
"Watson, I'd like to have you do me a favor.
Ask Mrs. Stover if she won't come here to see me.
You'd better go and get her.
Just send the nurse and Kozo (the valet) away for the afternoon, or while she's here.
If she comes at any other time I'd like to have her admitted."