"Look here, mother," said he, "you must have a doctor."
"I shall have no doctor."
"You've got influenza, and it's a very tricky business—influenza is; you never know where you are with it."
"Ye can call it influenza if ye like," said Mrs Machin. "There was no influenza in my young days. We called a cold a cold."
"Well," said Denry, "you aren't well, are you?"
"I never said I was," she answered grimly.
"No," said Denry, with the triumphant ring of one who is about to devastate an enemy. "And you never will be in this rotten old cottage."
"This was reckoned a very good class of house when your father and I came into it. And it's always been kept in repair. It was good enough for your father, and it's good enough for me. I don't see myself flitting. But some folks have gotten so grand. As for health, old Reuben next door is ninety-one. How many people over ninety are there in those gimcrack houses up by the Park, I should like to know?"
Denry could argue with any one save his mother. Always, when he was about to reduce her to impotence, she fell on him thus and rolled him in the dust. Still, he began again.
"Do we pay four-and-sixpence a week for this cottage, or don't we?" he demanded.