Give me your wrist." Reade took the thin little wrist between his thumb and finger, feeling for the pulse.
"Are you a doctor ?" sneered Drew.
"No; but generally I've intelligence enough to know whether a pulse is slow or fast, full or weak." "But-----" "Keep quiet," Tom commanded, as he drew out his watch.

His face expressed nothing in particular as he kept the tip of his forefinger against the radial artery at the boy's wrist.
"Fine," commented the young engineer, a few moments later, as he let go the captive wrist.
"Good pulse, eh ?" questioned Alf Drew.
"Great!" quoth Tom.

"Fine and wiry, and almost skips some beats.
I'm not much of an authority on such subjects, but I believe a boy of your age ought to have a normal pulse.

Where do you expect to wind up with your 'makings' and your cigarettes ?" "They don't hurt me," whined Alf.
"They don't, eh ?" demanded Reade, rising and drawing himself up to his full height of five-feet-eleven.

"Drew, do you think you look as healthy as I do ?" As he stood there, erect as a soldier, with his fine athletic figure revealed, and the bronze on his face seemingly inches deep, Tom Reade looked what he was---every inch a man though still a boy in years.
"Do you think you look as healthy as I do ?" Tom repeated.
"No-o-o-o," admitted Alf.