“To pine away and grow worse, George.”
“To the interior, then, mother.”
“To still pine away, George.”
“Try homeopathy, then. Like cures like. Send her into Surrey amongst the fir-trees—pine to cure pine.”
Mrs Canninge sipped her coffee.
“Or get Miss Penstemon to give her a few pilules out of one of her bottles—the one she selected when I came down on the Czar last year at that big hedge.”
“When you have ended your badinage, my dear son, I shall be ready to go on.”
“Done. Finis!” said George Canninge promptly.
“I have been noting the change in dear Beatrice for some time past.”
“I have not,” said the young man. “She always was very thin and genteel-looking.”