No More Learning

This in-door, sick-room life and constant strains wore Reggie down a
good deal, and shook his nerves, and lowered his billiard-play by forty
points. But the business of the Bank, and the business of the sick-room,
had to go on, though the glass was 116 degrees in the shade.

At the end of the third month, Riley was sinking fast, and had begun
to realize that he was very sick. But the conceit that made him worry
Reggie, kept him from believing the worst. "He wants some sort of mental
stimulant if he is to drag on," said the doctor.

"Keep him interested in life if you care about his living. " So Riley,
contrary to all the laws of business and the finance, received a
25-per-cent, rise of salary from the Directors. The "mental stimulant"
succeeded beautifully. Riley was happy and cheerful, and, as is often
the case in consumption, healthiest in mind when the body was weakest.
He lingered for a full month, snarling and fretting about the Bank,
talking of the future, hearing the Bible read, lecturing Reggie on sin,
and wondering when he would be able to move abroad.

But at the end of September, one mercilessly hot evening, he rose up in
his bed with a little gasp, and said quickly to Reggie:--"Mr. Burke, I
am going to die. I know it in myself. My chest is all hollow inside, and
there's nothing to breathe with. To the best of my knowledge I have done
nowt"--he was returning to the talk of his boyhood--"to lie heavy on my
conscience.
God be thanked, I have been preserved from the grosser forms
of sin; and I counsel YOU, Mr. Burke. . . . "

Here his voice died down, and Reggie stooped over him.

"Send my salary for September to my mother. . . . done great things with
the Bank if I had been spared. . . . mistaken policy. .