"Nonsense, Carrie! It's probably a little indigestion. You will insist upon those table d'hôtes. On the way to the theater we'll stop in at a drug store."
"Theater! Don't even mention the word. Come upstairs, Albert. Luckily I put a pair of your flannelette pajamas in the trunk. Ben, you rush over to the drug store for some camphorated oil. Albert, do you feel achy?"
Lilly laid out a quietly firm hand on his arm.
"Mamma, please let Albert get a word in."
"I know that boy like a book. He looks feverish."
"Albert," said Lilly, holding to the sedative quality in her voice, "do you feel ill?"
"I've a pain in my chest," he persisted, doggedly and with the drawn look about his mouth whitening.
They put him to bed. By nine o'clock a slight flush lay on Albert's cheek and he kept feeling of his brow.
"I think I have fever," he said once, always in scared white manner.
"Look in the paper and see if dry lips is one of the symptoms."
Then Zoe was dispatched home and the house physician called in, Mrs. Becker, as usual, tempestuous with instantaneous hysteria and conjuring to Lilly another sick room from out the hinterland of her childhood.