"How absurd!" Mrs. Symes laughed aloud.
"I mean it." Dr. Harpe spoke lightly and there was a smile upon her straight lips, but earnestness, a kind of warning, was in her eyes.
A clatter of tinware at the kitchen window attracted Symes's attention as he came from the bedroom.
"What's the matter, grandmother?" he asked in the teasing tone he sometimes used in speaking to her. "Not the cooking sherry, I hope."
She did not smile at his badinage.
"There's enough drinkin' in this house without my help," she returned sharply.
"What do you mean?" Symes's eyes opened. "Are you serious?"
The question he saw was superfluous.
"It's nothin' I'd joke about."
"You amaze me. Do you mean Augusta—drinks?"