"I am much obliged to you, but I'm really not sick," he insisted, "it is very good of you, however."
"It is nothing more than my duty," she rejoined, sweetly.
"Well, that may be, but there's nothing to prevent my being obliged to you for doing your duty."
Puzzled as always by his whimsical tone, she sat looking at him with her gentle, uncomprehending glance. "I wish, all the same," she murmured, "that you would let me send you a mustard plaster to put on your chest."
He shook his head without replying in words to her suggestion.
"Do you know it is three months since we had a letter from Alice," he said, "and six since she went away?"
"Oh, it's that then? You have been worrying about Alice?"
"How can I help it? We hardly know even that she is living."
"I've thought of her day and night since her marriage, though it's just as likely, isn't it, that she's taken up with the new countries and her new clothes?"
"Oh, of course, it may be that, but it is the awful uncertainty that kills."