The Flying Death, Samuel Hopkins Adams [books for students to read .TXT] 📗

pparently you don't know the way to the stairs," returned the other a trifle tartly. Looking at his keen, pallid and deeply lined face, the young doctor set him down as a rather irritable fellow, and suspected dyspepsia. "Everybody will be going to the beach," he added. "If you follow along you'll probably get there."

"Thanks," said Dick undisturbedly. It was a principle of his that the ill-temper of others was no logical reason for ill-temper in himself. In this case his principle worked well, for Haynes said with tolerable civility:

"You just came in this evening, didn't you?"

"Yes. I seem to have met the market for excitement."

By this time they had reached the large living-room, where they found Mrs. Johnston presiding with ill-directed advice over the struggles of her grey-bearded husband to insert himself into a pair of boots of insufficient calibre.

"Twenty-five years of service in the life-savin' corps an' ain't let to go out now without these der-r-r-ratted contrapt