Soosie-Toosie had a heavy cold in her head and appeared more unsightly than usual. Her large frame shook with her sneezes, and Joe, while humorously concerned for her and anxious that she should take steps to get well, soon dropped the humour for a little genuine trouble on his own account.
"There's some people I catch cold from, and there's some I don't catch cold from," he said, "just like some fires you catch heat from and some you never can. But Soosie-Toosie's colds be of the catching order. 'Tis the violence of her sneezes no doubt—like a fowling-piece going off. And though a cold be nought to her and here to-day and gone to-morrow, if I get 'em they run down the tubes and give me brownkitis and lay me by for weeks."
"Never seen you look better, Cousin Joe," declared John. "You be always at your fighting best when the woodcock comes back, so father says."
"He will have his bit of fun. There's only one thing wrong about your dear, good father, Johnny; and that is he ain't a sportsman. For a man to live in the Vale and not be a sportsman is like for a man to live by the sea and not care to go fishing. With a place in his heart for a bit of sport, I do believe Ben Bamsey would have been a perfect human. But as that's contrary to nature, no doubt the sport had to be left out."
"He is perfect," said Dinah, "and I've often told him so."
"He'd never believe it if you did," said Susan; "he's much too good a man to think he's good."
"As to that, my dear," answered Joe, "it's only false modesty and silliness to pretend you'm not good, when you know perfectly well you are. If I said I wasn't a good man, for example, it would be merely fishing for compliments; and if Soosie-Toosie said she weren't as good as gold, who'd believe her?"
"'Tis easy to be good if you're so busy as Soosie-Toosie and Johnny and a few more," answered Dinah; "but how you can be so amazing good with nothing on your hands, Cousin Joe? I'm sure that's wonderful."
"Nothing on my hands? you bad girl! Little you know. And me the mainspring. You ax Susan if I've got nothing on my hands, or Thomas here."
Lawrence Maynard was absent, but Mr. Palk took tea with the rest. He had not so far spoken.