But he didn't want Doctor Fraser, who gave the meanest medicines. He didn't want anybody. He hated everybody. He hated Lucy. He hated Jenny. When at last day came, and Marthy appeared to know what Virginia wanted for breakfast, he was still vowing passionately that he hated them all.
"Marthy, run at once for Doctor Fraser. Harry is quite sick," said Virginia, pale to the lips.
"But I won't see him, mamma, and I won't take his medicines. They are the meanest medicines."
"Perhaps he won't give you any, precious, and if he does, mamma will taste every single one for you."
Then Jenny began to beg to get up, and Lucy, who had been watching with dispassionate curiosity from the edge of her little bed, was sent to amuse her until Marthy's return.
"Suppose I had gone!" thought Virginia, while an overwhelming thankfulness swept the anxiety out of her mind. Not until the servant reappeared, dragging the fat old doctor after her, did Virginia remember that she was still barefooted, and go into her bedroom to search for her slippers.
"You don't think he is seriously sick, do you, doctor? Is there any need to be alarmed?" she asked, and her voice entreated him to allay her anxiety.
The doctor, a benevolent soul in a body which had run to fat from lack of exercise, was engaged in holding Harry's tongue down with a silver spoon, while, in spite of the child's furious protests, he leisurely examined his throat. When the operation was over, and Harry, crying, choking, and kicking, rolled into Virginia's arms, she put the question again, vaguely rebelling against the gravity in the kind old face which was turned half away from her:
"There's nothing really the matter, is there, doctor?"
He turned to her, and laid a caressing, if heavy, hand on her shoulder, which shook suddenly under the thin folds of her dressing-gown. After forty years in which he had watched suffering and death, he preserved still his native repugnance to contact with any side of life that did not have a comfortable feeling to it.