Summary

“A Day’s Wait” by Ernest Hemingway starts by telling us that a father wakes up to discover his boy, Schatz, is sick with influenza. He calls the doctor, who takes the boy’s temperature and leaves the father some pills for his son. At first, the father reads to the boy from a pirates’ book and tries to comfort him. But Schatz tells him that he could leave if his sickness is bothering him.

Seeing that the boy does not show much interest in the lecture and that he needs rest, the father goes out in the cold with his dog and his gun and hunts down some quails. He falls several times in the snow, yet he still manages to hit some birds. When he returns home, he finds out that Schatz has refused to let anyone in his room, for fear the others might get sic...