“Aye, and with a vengeance. I doubt if you will be able to leave your bed for another fortnight.”
Colonel Dacre uttered a cry of dismay.
“Nonsense, doctor, it can’t be as bad as that. Do oblige me by sitting down, and in ten minutes I shall be able to prove to you that I am already on the high way to recovery.”
The doctor smiled. If his patient did talk a little nonsense, it was natural enough. With such a pulse nothing better could be expected of him.
“Or rather say you will be shortly, if you keep quiet,” he said, with the diplomatic air of a man who is accustomed to humor sick people’s fancies.
“Well, but what is the matter with me? I would rather know the truth, if you please.”
“You have inflammation of the lungs, and as you have evidently no constitutional weakness of the chest, you must have been terribly reckless to get yourself in such a state as this.”
“I am not conscious of having misconducted myself as you suggest,” he answered dryly. “People are unaccountably ill sometimes, surely.”
“There must be a cause.”
“That’s begging the question,” said Colonel Dacre, ashamed to find himself so irritable. “You must really excuse me, doctor, but my nerves feel so jarred, it would be quite a pleasure to me to make myself disagreeable.”