“I can’t make cheeses now, my frocks are so short,” said Kate, whose spirits always recovered with the least change.
“No more dreams?”
“Not since I went to Bournemouth.”
“Your tongue.” And as Kate, who had a certain queer pleasure in the operation, put out the long pinky member with its ruddier tip, quivering like an animal, he laughed again, and said, “Thank you, Lady Caergwent; it is a satisfaction once in a way to see something perfectly healthy! You would not particularly wish for a spoonful of cod-liver oil, would you?”
Kate laughed, made a face, and shook her head.
“Well,” said the doctor as he released her, “I may set Lady Jane’s mind at rest. Nothing the matter there with the health.”
“Nothing the matter but perverseness, I am afraid,” said Lady Barbara, as Kate stole back to her place, and shut her face in with the board of her atlas. “It is my sister who is the victim, and I cannot have it go on. She is so dreadfully distressed whenever the child is in disgrace that it is doing her serious injury. Do you not see it, Mr. Mercer?”
“She is very fond of the child,” said Mr. Mercer.
“That is the very thing! She is constantly worrying herself about her, takes all her naughtiness for illness, and then cannot bear to see her reproved. I assure you I am forced for my sister’s sake to overlook many things which I know I ought not to pass by.” (Kate shuddered.) “But the very anxiety about her is doing great harm.”
“I thought Lady Jane nervous and excited this morning,” said Mr. Mercer: “but that seemed to me to be chiefly about the Colonel’s return.”