Poor Briggs! She really looked tired as she spoke, and I felt sorry for her.
"You look very tired," I remarked.
"I've had bad enough nights lately to make me so," she replied. "Master Chris—he is always waking up and coughing and coughing till I'm nearly driven wild. It's my belief it's the barley-sugar has got something to do with it. Ever since the doctor said some had better be given to him when he got coughing it seems to me his cough has got a deal worse."
"Why don't you put a little by his crib?" I suggested; "then he needn't wake you up when he wants it."
"I did try that last night," she answered, "but by the time I went to bed myself he had eaten it all up, and there wasn't a scrap of it left."
"I think he will be well enough to get up soon," I said hopefully.
"I think so too," she replied. "It was only yesterday I said so to Dr. Saunders, but he didn't seem to think the same.
"I don't altogether hold with him," she continued, with a return of her usual dignified manner; "and so I told my mistress this morning. He is over-careful, and I've no belief in these medical gentlemen who are given that way. When he comes to-morrow—There, if I didn't forget!" she interrupted herself to exclaim.
"What have you forgotten, Briggs?" I asked.
"My mistress asked me in particular to remind the doctor that he said Master Chris would be the better of a tonic, but he had forgotten to leave the prescription," she answered. "I never thought of it this morning when he was here."