"No, my dear woman—all my dear women," Doctor Bennett hastened to add, "he hasn't had smallpox. But I do know that he was a sick boy before he was shipwrecked, because his body shows that he has lost more flesh than a boy could lose in so short a time."
"Yes," corroborated Mrs. Crane, "he was very thin when we found him."
"Tuberculosis!" breathed Aunty Jane.
"Nothing of the kind," declared the doctor.
"But he was dreadfully thin," asserted Mabel. "His legs——"
"Never mind his legs," said Doctor Bennett. "It's his head that troubles us now. His body is mending with every moment; but there's something seriously wrong with his memory——"
"A dangerous lunatic!" gasped excitable Aunty Jane, half rising from her seat.
"No, no!" shouted the exasperated doctor, who didn't like Aunty Jane. "Nothing of the sort. Merely a very pitiable boy who has been extremely ill, probably with pneumonia. A boy who is naturally very bright, in all ways but the one. A boy with an excellent constitution or this last experience would have finished him. The best thing we can possibly do for him is to keep him right here, build up his strength in this splendid air, and then, when he's entirely well, take him to a specialist—I'm wiser about bodies than brains."
"Could I make him a pudding?" demanded Mabel, unexpectedly.
"No," roared the doctor. "We want him to get well."