“I hope it’s not about the style of hats in Melbourne,” he said in mock alarm, as they went down the path; “for I culpably forgot to notice. If it’s only sleeves, now, I can tell you—they’re up to the ears, and a yard and a half wide.”
“It’s about the state of my health,” she said sententiously,—“I wish to consult you professionally Dr. Courtney!”
He put on a sympathetic look.
“The heart, I suppose?” he said.
But Nell stopped short in the summer-house.
“Don’t be stupid!” she said. “Look here, Alan, have I, or have I not, got scarlet-fever?”
He could not help laughing. It seemed so absurd [223] ]for a fine girl—the picture of health—to ask such a question.
“Your skin is cool—your pulse normal—your tongue fit for a health advertisement. If you have got it you’re managing to conceal it very well,” he said. “You might give me the recipe for my other patients.”
“I was talking to some one who had scarlet-fever just after,” Nell returned,—“that’s all.”
There was no fun in Alan’s face now.