It was a good joke he had played on him--first a bit of pneumonia, then a set of bad lungs afflicted with that "galloping" something-or-other that hollows one's cheeks and takes the blood out of one's veins.

It was then that the horror had grown larger and larger each day in Mignon's big baby-blue eyes, until she came out with childish frankness and said that it was terribly embarrassing to have one's friends know that one was engaged to a consumptive.
Philip laughed as he thought of that.

The laugh came so suddenly and so explosively that Bram could have heard it a hundred yards away, even with the wind blowing as it was.

A consumptive! Philip doubled up his arm until the hard muscles in it snapped.

He drew in a deep lungful of air, and forced it out again with a sound like steam escaping from a valve.