"I am sorry that you should have wanted cheering."
"Don't you know what I mean, Robert?"
"No; I do not think that I do, exactly."
"I suppose your head is stronger. You do not get that feeling of dazed, helpless imbecility of brain, which hardly amounts to headache, but which yet—is almost as bad."
"Imbecility of brain may be worse than headache, but I don't think it can produce it."
"Well, well;—I don't know how to explain it."
"Headache comes, I think, always from the stomach, even when produced by nervous affections. But imbecility of the brain—"
"Oh, Robert, I am so sorry that I used the word."
"I see that it did not prevent your reading," he said, after a pause.
"Not such reading as that. I was up to nothing better."