"Perhaps you could give it us in English," I suggested ironically. "Mrs. Fairfax is well versed in Latin, but medical phrases, I am afraid—"
"Certainly—oh, certainly," he said, in irrepressible good humor. "I generally use Latin in apartment houses and reserve mere English for the tenements. Cynanche parotidaea is very prevalent just at present. It is almost epidemic. Gentle laxatives and warm fomentations are really all that it is necessary to prescribe. In English, we call the malady, mumps."
"Mumps!" I murmured.
"Mumps!" exclaimed Letitia.
"It is not serious, as you may perceive. It is painful and quite ugly to look at. I shall leave some directions with the mother and shall come in to-morrow morning."
"Is it catching?" I asked anxiously.
"Nothing more so—nothing more so," he replied cheerfully. "It is highly contagious. It spreads through schools, through apartment houses, with the rapidity of lightning."
"Then you think that my wife might—"
"I should say it was very likely—extremely probable," he declared, beaming upon us; "still it might be worse. Now, you know, scarlet fever, at present, is raging in this neighborhood. I have just come from a house where six little children are attacked, and the seventh has all the symptoms—"
We bowed him out in a trail of depression, and stood looking at each other silently. Then Letitia slowly took off her hat and coat and I did the same, deposing my dress-suit-case in my bedroom viciously. Fate was not smiling upon us.