In the story, the boy has a seemingly cryptic conversation with his father about leaving the sickroom.

After a while he said to me, “You don’t have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you.” “It doesn’t bother me.” “No, I mean you don’t have to stay if it’s going to bother you."

When the doctor tells him that his temperature is a hundred and two, the little boy, Schatz, thinks that he is going to die.

"People don’t die with a fever of one hundred and two. That’s a silly way to talk.” “I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you can’t live with forty-four degrees. I’ve got a hundred and two.” He had been waiting to die all day, ever since nine o’clock in the morning.

The boy's fears come about because he does not realize that there is a difference between temperature measurements in Celsius and in Fahrenheit. Once his father corrects his assumptions, Schatz relaxes enough to be able to give vent to his emotions. The dialogue suggests that Schatz asked his father to leave the sickroom because he doesn't want his father to get sick; also, in asking his father to leave, Schatz may have thought that he was sparing his father the grief of watching his son die.