Lucetta put her lips to the mixture and made a face of disgust.
"Ou-e-e-e!—boneset!" she shuddered. "I'd know it if I should meet it in another world—it takes me right back to my childhood and mother's roots and herbs! I can't, Donald; I simply can't drink all of that!"
"Drink as much as you can. It's good for little sick people," he urged, trying to twist the wryness of his own aftermath into a smile. "If the horrible taste counts for anything, it ought to make you well in five minutes."
Lucetta did her duty bravely, and when the worst was over Prime tucked her up in the blankets, adding his own for good measure. Then he made up a roasting fire, having some vague notion brought over from his boyhood that fever patients ought to sweat. Past this, he made a sad cake of pan-bread for his own midday meal, and when it was eaten he found that Lucetta had fallen asleep, and was further encouraged when he saw that fine little beads of perspiration had broken out on her forehead.
It was late in the afternoon before she awoke and called him.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.
"Much better; only I'm so warm I feel as if I should melt and run away. Can't you take at least one of the blankets off?"
"Not yet. You like to cook things, and I am giving you some of your own medicine. This is Domestic Science as applied to the human organization. Just imagine you are a missionary on one of the South Sea Islands, and that you are going to be served up presently à la Fiji. Shall I try to fix you up something to eat?"
"Not yet. But I feel as if I could drink the brook dry."
"No cold water," he decided authoritatively. "The doctor forbids it. But you may have another drink of hot boneset tea."