“But,” I repeated, “except for a natural foot-soreness I undoubtedly do feel very well.”
“My dear Baron, it is obvious beyond all argument that the more absolutely well a person is the more easily he must be affected by the smallest upset, by the smallest variation in the environment to which he has got accustomed. Paradox, which plays so large a part in all truths, is rampant here. Those in perfect health are nearer than anybody else to being seriously ill. To keep well you must never be quite so.”
He paused.
“When,” he continued, seeing that I said nothing, “we began caravaning we could not know how persistently cold and wet it was going to be, but now that we do I must say I feel the responsibility of having persuaded you—or of my sister-in-law’s having persuaded you—to join us.”
“But I feel very well,” I repeated.
“And so you will, up to the moment when you do not.”
“Rheumatism, now,” he said, shaking his head; “I greatly fear rheumatism for you in the coming winter. And rheumatism once it gets hold of a man doesn’t leave him till it has ravaged each separate organ, including, as everybody knows, that principal organ of all, the heart.”
This was gloomy talk, and yet the man was right. The idea that a holiday, a thing planned and looked forward to with so much pleasure, was to end by ravaging my organs did not lighten the leaden atmosphere that surrounded and weighed upon Frogs’ Hole Farm.
“I cannot alter the weather,” I said at last—irritably, for I felt ruffled.